degree. In hope of extending the pool or disclosing a fresh one, “men
drilled who never drilled before, and those who always drilled but
drilled the more.” Johnson & Co., Campbell & McBride, Fisher Brothers
and Shidemantle’s dusters on the southern end of the gusher-farms
condemned the territory in that direction. Painter Brothers developed a
small pool at Riebold Station. Craig & Cappeau, who struck the initial
spouter at Kane, and the Fisher Oil-Company failed to open up a field in
Middlesex township. Some oil was found at Zelienople and gas at numerous
points in raking over Butler county. The country south-west of Butler,
into West Virginia and Ohio, was overrun by oil-prospectors, intent upon
tying up lands and seeing that no lurking puddle of petroleum should
escape. Test wells crossed the lines into Allegheny and Beaver counties
and Shoustown, Shannopin, Mt. Nebo, Coraopolis, Undercliff and Economy
figured in the newspapers as oil-centers of more or less consequence.
Members of the old guard, fortified with a stack of blues at their elbow
to meet any contingency, shared in these proceedings. Brundred & Marston
drilled on Pine Creek, at the lower end of Armstrong county, in the
seventies, a Pittsburg company repeating the dose in 1886. At New
Bethlehem they bored two-thousand feet, finding seven-hundred feet of
red-rock. This rock varies from one to three-hundred feet on Oil Creek
and geologists assert is six-thousand feet thick at Harrisburg,
diminishing as it approaches the Alleghenies. The late W. J. Brundred,
agent at Oil City of the Empire Line until its absorption by the
Pennsylvania Railroad, was a skilled oil-operator, practical in his
ideas and prompt in his methods. His son, B. F. Brundred, is president
of the Imperial Refining Company and a prosperous resident of Oil City.
Joseph H. Marston died in California, whither he had gone hoping to
improve his health, in 1880. He was an artist at Franklin in the opening
years of developments and removed to Oil City. He owned the Petroleum
House and was exceptionally genial, enterprising and popular.
“Through many a year
We shall remember, with a sad delight,
The friends forever gone from mortal sight.”
Pittsburg assumed the airs of a petroleum-metropolis. Natural-gas in the
suburbs and east of the city changed its sooty blackness to a delicate
clearness that enabled people to see the sky. Oilmen made it their
headquarters and built houses at East Liberty and Allegheny. To-day more
representative producers can be seen in Pittsburg than in Oil City,
Titusville or Bradford. Within a hundred yards of the National-Transit
offices one can find Captain Vandergrift, T. J. Vandergrift, J. M.
Guffey, John Galey, Frank Queen, W. J. Young, P. M. Shannon, Frederick
Hayes, Dr. M C. Egbert, A. J. Gartland, Edward Jennings, Captain Grace,
S. D. Karns, William Fleming, C. D. Greenlee, John N. Lambing, John
Galloway, John J. Fisher, Henry Fisher, Frederick Fisher, J. A.
Buchanan, J. N. Pew, Michael Murphy, James Patterson and other veterans
in the business. These are some of the men who had the grit to open new
fields, to risk their cash in pioneer-experiments, to cheapen
transportation and to make kerosene “the poor man’s light.” They are not
youngsters any more, but their hearts have not grown old, their heads
have not swelled and the microbe of selfishness has not soured their
kindly impulses. They are of the royal stamp that would rather tramp the
cross-ties with honor than ride in a sixteen-wheeled Pullman
dishonestly.
[Illustration: W. E. GRIFFITH.]
Gas east and oil west was the rule at Pittsburg. Wildwood was the chief
sensation in 1889-90. This was the pet of W. E. Griffith, whose first
well on the Whitesell farm, twelve miles above Pittsburg, tapped the
sand in March of 1890, and flowed three-hundred barrels a day. This
prime send-off inaugurated Wildwood in good style. The Bear-Creek
Refining-Company drilled on the C. J. Gibson farm, Pine Creek, in 1888,
finding considerable gas. Later Barney Forst and Max Klein found third
sand and no oil in a well two-thirds of a mile west, on the Moon farm.
John M. Patterson went two miles south-east and drilled the Cockscomb
well, twin-link to a duster. J. M. Guffey & Co. hit sand and a taste of
oil near Perrysville, between which and the Cockscomb venture Gibson &
Giles had encouraging indications. Anon Griffith’s spouter touched the
jugular and opened a prolific pool. His No. 2 produced a quarter-million
barrels. Guffey & Co.’s No. 4, Rolsehouse farm, and Bamsdall’s No. 2,
Kress farm, started at three-thousand apiece the first twenty-four
hours. About three-hundred acres of rich territory were punctured, some
of the wells piercing the fifth sand at two-thousand feet. By the end of
1890 the district had yielded thirteen-hundred-thousand barrels, placing
it close to the top of the white-sand column. Wildwood is situated in
Allegheny county, on the Pittsburg & Western Railroad, and W. E.
Griffith is justly deemed the father of the nobby district. He is a
practical man, admirably posted regarding sands and oils and in every
respect worthy of the success that has crowned his efforts to hold up
his end of the string.
Thirty-three wells at Wildwood realized Greenlee & Forst not far from a
quarter-million dollars. Five in “the hundred-foot” field west of Butler
repaid their cost and brought them fifty-thousand dollars from the
South-Penn Oil-Company. The two lucky operators next leased and
purchased eight-hundred acres at Oakdale, Noblestown and McDonald, in
Allegheny and Washington counties, fifteen to twenty miles west of
Pittsburg. The Crofton third-sand pool was opened in February of 1888,
the Groveton & Young hundred-foot in the winter of 1889-90 and the
Chartiers third-sand field in the spring of 1890. South-west of these,
on the J. J. McCurdy farm, five miles north-east of Oakdale, Patterson &
Jones drilled into the fifth sand on October seventeenth, 1890. The well
flowed nine-hundred barrels a day for four months, six months later
averaged two-hundred and by the end of 1891 had yielded a
hundred-and-fifty thousand. Others on the same and adjacent tracts
started at fifty to twenty-five-hundred barrels, Patterson & Jones alone
deriving four-thousand barrels a day from thirteen wells. In the summer
of 1890 the Royal Gas-Company drilled two wells on the McDonald estate,
two miles west of McDonald Station and ten south-west of McCurdy,
finding a show of oil in the so-called “Gordon sand.” On the farm of
Edward McDonald, west side of the borough, the company struck oil and
gas in the same rock the latter part of September. The well stood idle
two months, was bored through the fifth sand in November, torpedoed on
December twentieth and filled three tanks of oil in ten days. The tools
were run down to clean it out, stuck fast and the pioneer venture of the
McDonald region ended its career simultaneously with the ending of 1890.
Thorn Creek had been a wonder and Wildwood a dandy, yet both combined
were to be dwarfed and all records smashed by the greatest white-sand
pool and the biggest gushers in America.
Geologists solemnly averred in 1883 that “the general boundaries of the
oil-region of Pennsylvania are now well established,” “we can have no
reasonable expectation that any new and extensive field will be found”
and “there are not any grounds for anticipating the discovery of new
fields which will add enough to the declining products of the old to
enable the output to keep pace with the consumption.” Notwithstanding
these learned opinions, Thorn Creek had the effrontery to “be found” in
1884, Wildwood in 1890 and the monarch of the tribe in 1891. The men who
want people to discard Genesis for their interpretation of the rocks
were as wide of the mark as the dudish Nimrod who couldn’t hit a
barn-door at thirty yards. He paralyzed his friends by announcing: “Wal,
I hit the bullseye to-day the vehwy fiwst shot!” Congratulations were
pouring in when he added: “Yaas, and the bweastly fawmeh made me pay
twenty-five dollahs fawh the bull I didn’t see when I fiwed,
doncherknow!” A raw recruit instructed the architect of his uniform to
sew in an iron-plate “to protect the most vital part.” The facetious
tailor, instead of fixing the plate in the breast of the coat, planted
it in the seat of the young fellow’s breeches. The enemy worsting his
side in a skirmish, the retreating youth tried to climb over a
stone-wall. A soldier rushed to transfix him with his bayonet, which
landed on the iron-plate with the force of a battering-ram. The shock
hurled the climber safely into the field, tilted his assailant backward
and broke off the point of the cold steel! The happy hero picked himself
up and exclaimed fervently: “That tailor knew a devilish sight better’n
me what’s my most vital part!” Operators who paid no heed to scientific
disquisitions, but went on opening new fields each season, believed the
drill was the one infallible test of petroleum’s most vital part.
In May of 1891 the Royal Gas-Company finished two wells on the Robb and
Sauters tracts, south of town, across the railroad-track. The Robb
proved a twenty-barreler and the Sauters flowed one-hundred-and-sixty
barrels a day from the fifth sand. They attracted the notice of the
oilmen, who had not taken much stock in the existence of paying
territory at McDonald. Three miles north-east the Matthews well, also a
May-flower, produced thirty barrels a day from the Gordon rock. On July
first it was drilled into the fifth sand, increasing the output to
eight-hundred barrels a day for two months. Further probing the first
week in September increased it to _eleven-thousand barrels_! Scouts
gauged it at seven-hundred barrels an hour for three hours after the
agitation ceased! It yielded four-hundred-thousand barrels of oil in
four months and was properly styled Matthews the Great. The owners were
James M. Guffey, John Galey, Edward Jennings and Michael Murphy. They
built acres of tanks and kept ten or a dozen sets of tools constantly at
work. Mr. Guffey, a prime mover in every field from Richburg to West
Virginia, was largely interested in the Oakdale Oil-Company’s
eighteen-hundred acres. With Galey, Jennings and Murphy he owned the
Sturgeon, Bell and Herron farms, the first six wells on which yielded
twenty-eight-thousand barrels a day! The mastodon oil-field of the world
had been ushered in by men whose sagacious boldness and good judgment
Bradford, Warren, Venango, Clarion and Butler had witnessed repeatedly.
[Illustration:
C. D. GREENLEE. B. FORST.
GREENLEE & FORST WELL, McDONALD.
]
C. D. Greenlee and Barney Forst, who joined forces west of Butler and at
Wildwood, in August of 1891 leased James Mevey’s two-hundred-and-fifty
acres, a short distance north-east of McDonald. Greenlee and John W.
Weeks, a surveyor who had mapped out the district and predicted it would
be the “richest field in Pennsylvania,” selected a gentle slope beside a
light growth of timber for the first well on the Mevey farm. The rig was
hurried up and the tools were hurried down. On Saturday, September
twenty-sixth, the fifth sand was cracked and oil gushed at the rate of
one-hundred-and-forty barrels an hour. The well was stirred a trifle on
Monday, September twenty-eighth, with startling effect. It put
_fifteen-thousand-six-hundred barrels_ of oil into the tanks in
twenty-four hours! The Armstrong and the Matthews had to surrender their
laurels, for Greenlee & Forst owned the largest oil-well ever struck on
this continent. On Sunday, October fourth, after slight agitation by the
tools, the mammoth poured out seven-hundred-and-fifty-barrels an hour
for four hours, a record that may, perhaps, stand until Gabriel’s horn
proclaims the wind-up of oil-geysers and all terrestrial things. The
well has yielded several-hundred-thousand barrels and is still pumping
fifty. Greenlee & Forst’s production for a time exceeded twenty-thousand
barrels a day and they could have taken two or three-million dollars for
their properties. The partners did not pile on the agony because of
their good-luck. They kept their office at Pittsburg and Greenlee
continued to live at Butler. He is a typical manager in the field,
bubbling over with push and vim. Forst had a clothing-store at
Millerstown in its busy days, waltzed around the bull-ring in the
Bradford oil-exchange and returned southward to scoop the capital prize
in the petroleum-lottery.
Scurrying for territory in the Jumbo-field set in with the vigor of a
thousand football-rushes. McDonald tourists, eager to view the wondrous
spouters and hungry for any morsel of land that could be picked up,
packed the Panhandle trains. Rigs were reared on town-lots, in gardens
and yards. Gaslights glared, streams of oil flowed and the liveliest
scenes of Oil Creek were revived and emphasized. By November first
two-hundred wells were drilling and sixty rigs building. Fifty-four
October strikes swelled the daily production at the close of the month
to eighty-thousand barrels! What Bradford had taken years to accomplish
McDonald achieved in ninety days! Greenlee & Forst had thirty wells
drilling and three-hundred-thousand barrels of iron-tankage. Guffey,
Galey & Jennings were on deck with fifteen or twenty. The Fisher
Oil-Company, owning one-fourth the Oakdale’s big tract and the McMichael
farm, had sixteen wells reaching for the jugular, from which the
Sturgeon and Baldwin spouters were drawing ten-thousand barrels a day.
William Guckert—he started at Foster and was active at Edenburg, Parker,
Millerstown, Bradford and Thorn Creek—and John A. Steele had two
producing largely and eight going down on the Mevey farm. J. G.
Haymaker, a pioneer from Allegany county, N. Y., to Allegheny county,
Pa., and Thomas Leggett owned one gusher, nine drilling wells and
five-hundred acres of leases. Haymaker began at Pithole, drilled in
Venango and Clarion, was prominent in Butler and in 1878 optioned blocks
of land on Meek’s Creek that developed good territory and the thriving
town of Haymaker, the forerunner of the Allegheny field. He boosted
Saxonburg and Legionville and his brother, Obadiah Haymaker, opened the
Murraysville gas-field and was shot dead defending his property against
an attack by Weston’s minions. Veterans from every quarter flocked in
and new faces were to be counted by hundreds at Oakdale, Noblestown and
McDonald. The National-Transit Company laid a host of lines to keep the
tanks from overflowing and Mellon Brothers operated an independent
pipe-line. Handling such an avalanche of oil was not child’s play and it
would have been utterly impossible in the era of wagons and flat-boats
on Oil Creek.
McDonald territory, if unparalleled in richness, in some respects
tallied with portions of Oil Creek and the fourth-sand division of
Butler. Occasionally a dry-hole varied the monotony of the reports and
ruffled the plumage of disappointed seekers for gushers. Even the Mevey
farm trotted out dusters forty rods from Greenlee & Forst’s
record-breaker. The “belt” was not continuous from McCurdy and dry-holes
shortened it southward and narrowed it westward, but a field so prolific
required little room to build up an overwhelming production. An engine
may exert the force of a thousand horses and the yield of the Greenlee &
Forst or the Matthews in sixty days exceeded that of a hundred average
wells in a twelvemonth. The remotest likelihood of running against such
a snap was terribly fascinating to operators who had battled in the
older sections. They were not the men to let the chance slip and stay
away from McDonald. Hence the field was defined quickly and the line of
march resumed towards the southward, into Washington county and
West-Virginia.
Wrinkles, gray-hairs and sometimes oil-wells come to him who has
patience to wait. Just as 1884 was expiring, the discovery of oil in a
well on the Gantz lot, a few rods from the Chartiers-Railroad depot,
electrified the ancient borough of Washington, midway between Pittsburg
and Wheeling. The whole town gathered to see the grease spout above the
derrick. Hundreds of oilmen hurried to pick up leases and jerk the
tools. For six weeks a veil of mystery shrouded the well, which was then
announced to be of small account. Eight others had been started, but the
territory was deep, the rock was often hard, and the excited populace
had to wait six months for the answer to the drill.
Traveling over Washington county in 1880, Frederick Crocker noticed its
strong geological resemblance to the upper oil-fields, which he knew
intimately. The locality was directly on a line from the northern
districts to points south that had produced oil. He organized the
Niagara Oil-Company and sent agents to secure leases. Remembering the
collapse of Washington companies in 1860-1, when wells on Dunkard Creek
attracted folks to Greene county, farmers held back their lands until
public-meetings and a house-to-house canvass satisfied them the Niagara
meant business. Blocks were leased in the northern tier of townships and
in 1882 a test well was drilled on the McGuigan farm. An immense flow of
gas was encountered at twenty-two-hundred feet and not a drop of oil.
Not disheartened, the company went west three miles and sank a well on
the Buchanan farm, forty-two-hundred feet. Possibly the hole contained
oil, but it was plugged and the drillers proceeded to bore
thirty-six-hundred feet on the Rush farm, four miles south. Jumping
eleven miles north-east, they obtained gas, salt-water and feeble spurts
of oil from a well on the Scott farm. About this stage of the
proceedings the People’s Light and Heat Company was organized to supply
Washington with natural-gas. From three wells plenty of gas for the
purpose was derived. A rival company drilled a well on the Gantz lot,
adjacent to the town, which at twenty-one-hundred feet struck the vein
of oil that threw the county-seat into spasms on the last day of 1884.
The fever broke out afresh in July of 1885, by a report that the Thayer
well, on the Farley farm, a mile south-west in advance of developments,
had “come in.” This well, located in an oatfield in a deep ravine, was
worked as a mystery. Armed guards constantly kept watch and scouts
reclining on the hill-top contented themselves with an unsatisfactory
peep through a field-glass. One night a shock of oats approached within
sixty feet of the derrick. The guard fired and the propelling power
immediately took to its heels and ran. Another night, while a crowd of
disinterested parties jangled with the guards, scouts gained entrance to
the derrick from the rear, but discovered no oil. Previous to this a
scout had paid a midnight visit to the well, eluded the guards, boldly
climbed to the top of the derrick and with chalk marked the
crown-pulley. With the aid of their glasses the vigilant watchers on the
hill-top counted the revolutions and calculated the length of cable
needed to reach the bottom of the well. A bolder move was to crawl under
the floor of the derrick. This was successfully accomplished by several
daring fellows, one of whom was caught in the act. He weighed
two-hundred-and-forty pounds and his frantic struggles for a comfortable
resting-place led to his discovery. A handful of cigars and a long pull
at his pocket flask purchased his freedom. The well was a failure. R. H.
Thayer drilled four more good ones, one a gusher that netted him
three-thousand dollars a day for months. Other operators crowded in and
were rewarded with dusters of the most approved type.
The despondency following the failure of Thayer’s No. 1 was dispelled on
August twenty-second. The People’s Light and Heat Company’s well, on the
Gordon farm, pierced a new sand two-hundred-and-sixty feet below the
Gantz formation, and oil commenced to scale the derrick. Again the
petroleum-fever raged. An owner of the well, at church on Sunday
morning, suddenly awakened from his slumbers and horrified pastor and
congregation by yelling: “By George! There she spouts!” The day previous
he had seen the well flow and religious thoughts had been temporarily
replaced by dreams of a fortune. This well’s best day’s record was
one-hundred-and-sixty barrels. Test wells for the new Gordon sand were
sunk in all directions and the Washington field had made a substantial
beginning. The effect on the inhabitants was marked. The price of wool
no longer formed the staple of conversation, the new industry entirely
superseding it. Real-estate values shot skyward and the borough
population strode from five-thousand to seventy-five-hundred. The sturdy
Scotch-Presbyterians would not tolerate dance-houses, gambling-hells and
dens of vice in a town that for twenty years had not permitted the sale
of liquor. Time works wonders. Washington county, which fomented the
Whisky Insurrection, was transformed into a prohibition stronghold. The
festive citizen intent upon a lark had to journey to Pittsburg or
Wheeling for his jag.
Col. E. H. Dyer, whom the Gantz well allured to the new district, leased
the Calvin Smith farm, three miles north-east, and started the drill. He
had twenty years’ experience and very little cash. His funds giving out,
he offered the well and lease for five-hundred dollars. Willets & Young
agreed to finish the well for two-thirds interest. They pounded the
rock, drilled through the fifth sand and hit “the fifty-foot” nearer
China. In January of 1886 the well-Dyer No. 1—flowed four-hundred
barrels a day. Expecting gas or a dry-hole, from the absence of oil in
the customary sand, the owners had not erected tanks and the stream
wasted for several days. Dyer sold his remaining one-third to Joseph W.
Craig, a well-known operator in the Oil-City and Pittsburg
oil-exchanges, for seventy-five-thousand dollars. He organized the
Mascot Oil-Company, located the McGahey in another section of the field
and pocketed two-hundred-thousand dollars for his year’s work in
Washington county. The Smith proved to be the creamiest farm in the
field, returning Willets, Young and Craig six-hundred-thousand dollars.
Calvin Smith was a hired man in 1876, working by the month on the farm
he bought in 1883, paying a small amount and arranging to string out the
balance in fifteen annual instalments. His one-eighth royalty fattened
his bank-account in eighteen months to six figures, an achievement
creditable to the scion of the multitudinous Smith-family.
From the sinking of the Dyer well drilling went on recklessly. Everybody
felt confident of a great future for Washington territory. Isaac
Willets, brother of an owner of the Smith tract, paid sixty-thousand
dollars for the adjoining farm—the Munce—and spent two-hundred-thousand
in wells that cleared him a plump half-million. John McKeown the same
day bought the farm of the Munce heirs, directly north of their uncle’s,
and drilled wells that yielded him five-thousand dollars a day. He
removed to Washington and died there. His widow erected a
sixty-thousand-dollar monument over his grave, something that would
never have happened if John, plain, hard-headed and unpretentious, could
have expressed his sentiments. Thayer No. 2, on the Clark farm,
adjoining the Gordon, startled the fraternity in May of 1886 by flowing
two-thousand barrels a day from the Gordon sand. It was the biggest
spouter in the heap. Lightning struck the tank and burned the gusher,
the blazing oil shooting flames a hundred feet towards the blue canopy.
At night the brilliant light illumined the country for miles, travelers
pronouncing it equal to Mt. Vesuvius in active eruption. The burning oil
ran to Gordon No. 1, on lower ground, setting it off also. In a week the
Thayer blaze was doused and the stream of crude turned into the tanks of
No. 1. Next night a tool-dresser, carrying a lantern on his way to
“midnight tower,” set fire to the gas which hung around the tanks. The
flames once more shot above the tree-tops, the tool-dresser saved his
life only by rolling into the creek, but the derrick was saved and no
damage resulted to the well.
Captain J. J. Vandergrift leased the Barre farm, south of the Smith, and
drilled a series of gushers that added materially to his great wealth.
Disposing of the Barre, he developed the Taylorstown pool and reaped a
fortune. T. J. Vandergrift leased the McManis farm, six miles south of
Washington, and located the first Taylorstown well. Taylorstown is still
on duty and W. J. Young manages the company that acquired the
Vandergrift interests. South of the Barre farm James Stewart, vendor of
a cure-all salve, owned a shanty and three acres of land worth
four-hundred dollars. He leased to Joseph M. Craig for one-fourth
royalty. The one well drilled on the lot spouted two-thousand barrels a
day for weeks. It is now pumping fairly. This was salve for Stewart and
liniment for Craig, whose Washington winnings exceed a half-million.
“Mammy” Miller, an aged colored woman, lived on a small lot next to
Stewart and leased it at one-fourth royalty to a couple of local
merchants. They drilled a thousand-barrel well and “Mammy” became the
most courted negress in Pennsylvania. The Union Oil-Company took
four-hundred-thousand dollars from the Davis farm. Patrick Galligan, the
contractor of the Smith well, leased the Taylor farm and grew rich. Pew
& Emerson, who have made millions by natural-gas operations, leased the
Manifold farm, west of the Smith. The first well paid them
twenty-thousand dollars a month and subsequent strikes manifolded this a
number of times. Pew & Emerson have risen by their energy and shrewdness
and can occupy a front pew in the congregation of petroleumites.
Samuel Fergus, once county-treasurer and a man of broad mould, struck a
geyser in the Fergus annex to the main pool. He drilled on his
twenty-four acres solely to accommodate Robert Greene, pumper for Davis
Brothers. Greene had much faith and no money, but he advised Fergus to
exercise the tools at a particular spot. Fergus might have kept the
whole hog and not merely a pork-chop. He sold three-eighths and carried
one-eighth for Greene, who refused twenty-thousand dollars for it the
day the well began flowing two-thousand barrels. “Bob” Greene, like
Artemas Ward’s kangaroo, was “a amoosin’ cuss!” Called to Bradford
shortly after the gusher was struck, he met an old acquaintance at the
station. His friend invited Bob into the smoker to enjoy a good cigar.
He declined and in language more expressive than elegant said: “I’ve
been a ridin’ in smokers all my life. Now I’m goin’ to turn a new leaf.
I’m goin’ to take a gentleman’s car to Pittsburg and from there to
Bradford I’m goin’ to have a Pullman, if it takes a hull day’s
production.” Bob took his first ride in a Pullman accordingly. The first
venture induced Fergus to punch his patch full of holes and do a turn at
wildcatting. His stalwart luck fired the hearts of many young farmers to
imitate him, in some instances successfully. Washington has not yet gone
out of the oil-business. The Cecil pool kept the trade guessing this
year, but its gushers lacked endurance and the field no longer
terrorizes the weakest lambkin in the speculative fold.
Greene county experienced its first baptism of petroleum in 1861-2-3,
when many wells were drilled on Dunkard Creek. The general result was
unsatisfactory. The idea of boring two-thousand feet for oil had not
been conceived and the shallow holes did not reach the principal strata.
Of fourth sand, fifth sand, Gordon rock, fifty-foot rock, Trenton rock,
Berea grit, corn-meal rock, Big-Injun sand and others of the deep-down
brand operators on Dunkard Creek never dreamed. Some oil was detected
and more blocks of land were tied up in 1864-5. The credulous natives
actually believed their county would soon be shedding oil from every
hill and hollow, garden and pasture-field. The holders of the
tracts—lessees for speculation only—drilled a trifle, sold interests to
any suckers wanting to bite and the promised developments fizzled. E. M.
Hukill, who started in 1868 at Rouseville, leased twenty-thousand acres
in 1885 and located a well on D. L. Donley’s farm, one-third mile
south-east of the modest hamlet of Mt. Morris. Morris Run empties into
Dunkard Creek near the village. The tools were swung on March second,
1886. Fishing-jobs, hard rock and varied hindrances impeded the work. On
October twenty-first oil spouted, two flows occurred next day and a tank
was constructed. Saltwater bothered it and the well—twenty-two-hundred
feet—was not worth the pains taken for months to work it as a mystery.
Hukill drilled a couple of dusters and the Gregg well at Willowtree was
also a dry-hole at twenty-three hundred feet. Craig & Cappeau and James
M. Guffey & Co. swept over the south-western section in an expensive
search for crude. From the northern limit of McKean to the southern
border of Greene county Pennsylvania had been ransacked. The Keystone
players—Venango, Warren, Forest, Elk, McKean, Clarion, Armstrong,
Butler, Allegheny, Beaver and Washington—put up a stiff game and the
region across the Ohio was to have its innings.
In the summer of 1881 Butler capitalists drilled a well on the Smith
farm, near Baldridge, seven miles south of the county-seat. It had a
nice white sand and a smell of oil. S. Simcox, J. J. Myers and Porter
Phipps leased the land on which Renfrew now stands and put down a hole
on the Hamill tract. The well showed only a freshet of salt-water until
thirty feet in the third sand, when it flowed crude at a hundred-barrel
gait. This strike, in March of 1882, boomed the territory below Butler
and ushered in Baldridge and Renfrew. Milton Stewart and Lyman Stewart
were interested with Simcox, Myers and Phipps in the property and helped
organize the Bullion Salt-Water Company.
The Cecil pool, in Washington county, furnishes its oil from the
fifty-foot sand. One well, finished in April of 1895, on a village lot,
flowed thirty-three hundred barrels in twenty-four hours. The biggest
strike at Legionville, Beaver county, was Haymaker’s seven-hundred
barreler. The Shoustown or Shannopin field, also in Beaver, sixteen
miles from Pittsburg, is owned principally by James Amm & Co. Coraopolis
is a thriving oil town, fifteen miles west of the Smoky City. For miles
along the Ohio derricks are quite plentiful. Greene county has been
decidedly brisk in this year of grace and cheap petroleum. And so the
tide rolls on and “thus wags the world away.”
The southern trail, with its magnificent Butler output, its Allegheny
geysers, its sixteen-thousand barrels a day in Washington and its
wonderful strikes in Greene, was big enough to fill the bill and lap
over all the edges.
HITS AND MISSES.
A Bradford minister, when the Academy of Music burned down, shot wide of
the mark in attributing the fire to “the act of God.” Sensible
Christians resented the imputation that God would destroy a dozen houses
and stores to wipe out a variety-theater, or that He had anything to do
with building up a trade in arson and figuring as an incendiary.
He struck a match and the gas exploded;
An angel now, he knows it was loaded.
“Mariar, what book was you readin’ so late last night?” asked a stiff
Presbyterian father at Franklin. “It was a novel by Dumas the elder.”
“‘Elder!’ I don’t believe it. What church was he elder on, Ish’d like to
know, and writ novels? Go and read Dr. Eaton’s Presbytery uv Erie.”
Hymn-singing is not always appropriate, or a St. Petersburg leader would
not have started “When I Can Read My Title Clear” to the minstrel-melody
of “Wait for the Wagon and We’ll All Take a Ride!” At an immersion in
the river below Tidioute, as each convert, male or female, emerged
dripping from the water, the people interjected the revivalist chorus:
“They look like men in uniform,
They look like men of war!”
Mr. Gray, of Boston, once discovered a “non-explosive illuminating
gasoline.” To show how safe the new compound was, he invited a number of
friends to his rooms, whither he had taken a barrel of the fluid, which
he proceeded to stir with a red-hot poker. As they all went through the
roof he endeavored to explain to his nearest companion that the
particular fluid in the barrel had too much benzine in it, but the
gentleman said he had engagements higher up and could not wait for the
explanation. Mr. Gray continued his ascent until he met Mr. Jones, who
informed him that there was no necessity to go higher, as everybody was
coming down; so Mr. Gray started back to be with the party. Mr. Gray’s
widow offered the secret for the manufacture of the non-explosive fluid
at a reduced rate, to raise money to buy a silver-handled coffin with a
gilt plate for her departed husband.
The speech of a youth who goes courting a lass,
Unless he’s a dunce at the foot of the class,
Is sure to be season’d with natural gas.
Grant Thomas, train-dispatcher at Oil City of the Allegheny-Valley
Railroad, is one of the jolliest jokers alive. When a conductor years
ago a young lady of his acquaintance said to him: “I think that Smith
girl is just too hateful; she’s called her nasty pug after me!” “Oh,”
replied the genial ticket-puncher, in a tone meant to pour oil on the
troubled waters, “that’s nothing; half the cats in Oil City are called
after me!” The girl saw the point, laughed heartily and the angel of
peace hovered over the scene.
“What’s in a name?” so Shakespeare wrote.
Well, a good deal when fellows vote,
Want a check cashed, or sign a note;
And when an oilman sinks a well,
Dry as the jokes of Digby Bell,
Dennis or Mud fits like a shell.
[Illustration: VIEWS ON THE TARR FARM, OIL CREEK, IN 1863-6.]
TARR HOMESTEAD IN 1862
WELLS ON TARR FARM
LOWER TARR FARM
PHILLIPS AND WOODFORD WELLS
JAMES S. TARR
[Illustration: REFINERY OF THE NOBELS AT BAKU, RUSSIA.]
XIV.
MORE OYSTERS IN THE STEW.
OHIO CALLS THE TURN AT MECCA—MACKSBURG, MARIETTA, LIMA AND FINDLAY HEARD
FROM—WEST VIRGINIA NOT LEFT OUT—VOLCANO’S EARLY RISERS—SISTERSVILLE
AND PARKERSBURG DROP IN—HOOSIERS COME OUT OF THEIR SHELL—COLORADO,
KANSAS, WYOMING, TEXAS AND CALIFORNIA HELP FLAVOR THE PETROLEUM
TUREEN.
----------
“The world’s mine oyster.”—_Shakespeare._
“’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.”—_Tennyson._
“To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”—_Milton._
“Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea.”—_Holmes._
“I am his Highness’ dog at Kew,
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?”—_Pope._
“The influence of a strong spirit makes itself felt.”—_Colmore._
“Nature fits all her children with something to do.”—Lowell.
“Let us, then, be up and doing;
Still achieving, still pursuing.”—_Longfellow._
“An intense hour will do more than dreamy years.”—_Beecher._
“If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.”—_Queen Elizabeth._
“There yet remains one effort to be made.”—_Samuel Johnson._
“Do what lieth in thy power and God will assist thy good-will.”—_Thomas
à Kempis._
----------
[Illustration: EDWARD H. JENNINGS.]
Pennsylvania was not to be the solitary oyster in the stew, the one and
only winner in the petroleum-game. Although the Keystone State raked in
the first jack-pot on Oil Creek with the Drake royal-flush, rival
players were billed for an early appearance. Ohio, always ready to
furnish presidents and office-holders for the whole nation, was equally
willing to gather riches by the oleaginous route and dealt Mecca as its
initial trump in the summer of 1860. Years before a farmer near the
quiet town in Trumbull county, digging a well for water, found an
evil-smelling liquid and promptly filled up the hole. This supplied a
cue to J. H. Hoxie, after the news of Drake’s experiment reached him,
and he sank a shallow well close to the farmer’s unlucky venture.
Piercing a covering of dirt twenty feet and coarse sand-rock ten feet,
the tools unlocked a reservoir of dark oil, which responded to the pump
with the vehemence of a Venango spouter. Estimates of the daily yield,
much of which floated down stream, varied from one-hundred to
three-hundred barrels. Probably forty to fifty would be nearer the real
figure. The oil, 26° gravity and very dark green in color, was a
superior lubricant. This new phase of “the Ohio Idea” brought multitudes
of visitors to the scene. Mecca became the mecca of all sorts, sizes and
conditions of worshippers at the greasian shrine. To come and see was to
desire a chance in the exciting lottery. Hoxie, elated beyond measure
over the strike, traveled around the country to magnify the field and
his own connection with it. Small leases were gobbled eagerly for a
small cash-bonus and a royalty, sometimes half the oil done up in
barrels. A three-pole derrick, a spring-pole and light tools hitched to
a rope sufficed to “kick down” a well. Depths ranged from thirty feet to
one-hundred. Portable engines and boilers followed when hand-power
weakened and the wells must be pumped steadily. Rude drilling-outfits
and board-shanties went up by hundreds. Needy adventurers might secure
an acre of ground and sprout into prosperous oilmen in twenty or thirty
days. The tempting bait was snapped at greedily. Rig-builders,
carpenters, teamsters, tool-dressers, laborers, shop-keepers, saloonists
and speculators crowded the busy spot in quest of jobs, locations or
easy victims. Mecca seemed too far off, so a genuine “oil-town,” lacking
none of the earmarks of such creations, was established on the James
Cowdey farm and labeled Oil Diggings. It soon sported a post-office,
which distributed stacks of mail, machine-shops, groceries and
boarding-houses galore; nor were groggeries, gambling-dens and the usual
incidentals difficult to discover.
The opening months of 1861 swelled the excitement and the population.
The bright and the dark sides were not far apart. Many who came with
high expectations in January returned disappointed in June. The field
had extended south from Power’s Corners, substantial frames enclosed
numerous wells and a refinery was erected. Yet the good quality of the
oil was scantily appreciated until most of the wells had been about
exhausted. Often it went begging vainly for purchasers in Cleveland or
Buffalo. Then the price advanced, actually reaching fifty-two dollars a
barrel in 1863-4. Adulteration with cheaper oils deteriorated the
product and it dropped below a paying rate. Operators realized in the
autumn of 1861 that the territory was declining rapidly and the wiser
ones departed. Some held on a year or two longer, drilled their wells
five-hundred feet in hope of hitting other sands and quit at last.
George Moral, a one-eyed veteran of the war, has stuck to the Shaeffer
farm, at the southern end of the district, and he is still getting a
morsel of oil from a nest of shallow wells. The forest of derricks and
engine-houses has disappeared. Oil Diggings is a tradition and “Ichabod”
is written over the once stirring district.
“Old Rhinestein’s walls are crumbled now.
Stern Ruin’s ploughshare drives elate full on thy bloom.”
Mix & Force were, perhaps, the most successful Mecca operators. It was
hard to extract the heavy oil from the rock by ordinary processes.
Calvin Adams, of Pittsburg, conceived the idea of sinking a shaft and
drifting into the sand, exactly as in gold-mining. He employed four men,
pumped the oil and water that seeped in and hoisted lots of rock to the
surface, where steam was used to force out the greasy fluid that
saturated the sand. This novel method paid while oil was high-priced,
but was too expensive when the stuff went zero-wards. The oil-bearing
rock, known as Berea grit, lay in flat formations and was somewhat
porous. Mr. Rider removed his refinery to Oil Creek in 1862, since which
period refining has been a lost art in Trumbull county. Everybody has
heard of the resolute pioneer who, bound for Colorado by the overland
line of prairie-schooners, inscribed on his Conestoga wagon: “Pike’s
Peak or Bust!” He was distanced by a band of petroleum-seekers at Oil
Diggings. The jokers built their engine-house and belt-house parallel
with the public road and emblazoned in two-foot capitals on the derrick:
“Oil, Hell or China!” James A. Garfield, afterwards Chief Magistrate of
the United States—he was a pilgrim to Mecca and owned an interest in the
“Preachers’ Wells,” among the best in the bundle—once quoted this legend
in Congress. Paying his respects pointedly to “Sunset” Cox, who
represented an Ohio district in the House and had failed of re-election,
Garfield closed with these words:
“My friend found in the late election a decided majority against him.
Evidently he is going down, down, down until, in the language of an
oil-explorer, he comes to ‘OIL, HELL OR CHINA!’”
Garfield left Oil Diggings when the bubble burst, served term after term
in Congress, went to the White House and perished by the bullet of a
vile assassin. Cox left Ohio for New York, secured the good-will of
Tammany, went back to Congress repeatedly, died years ago and was
honored with a statue in Astor Place. Both were political leaders on
opposing sides and warm personal friends, both gained world-wide
celebrity, both were Ohioans and oil-producers, and both retained to the
last that “chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound.”
[Illustration: MICHAEL EDIC HESS.]
M. E. Hess, for thirty years a respected citizen of Pennsylvania, began
his oil-career at Mecca. He came to Oil Creek in the sixties, formed a
partnership with Franklin S. Tarbell and operated largely in various
sections. He was prominent in the Clarion field and took up his abode at
Edenburg. There, as wherever he lived, he has been active in
church-work, in building up a religious sentiment and in furthering the
best interests of the community. He has served acceptably in the
borough-council and is now justice of the peace. Upright in his life and
character, sincere in his friendships, kind to the poor and trustworthy
everywhere, M. E. Hess deserves the high place he has always held in
popular regard. The passing years have touched him lightly, his heart is
young, he is “not slothful in business” and he trains with the “men who
can hear the Decalogue and feel no self-reproach.”
“An honest man’s the noblest work of God.”
The south-east border of Ohio next experienced the petroleum-revival.
The region about Marietta, where surface-signs of greasiness were noted
a century ago, for years enjoyed its full share of satisfactory
developments. Three or four counties have been covered satisfactorily,
producing from the Big Injun sand. The Benwood pool, in Monroe county,
introduced by a big well on the Price farm in August of 1896, has
yielded liberally and is still the object of respectful attention.
Macksburg, sufficiently important in 1881 to hold the entire oil-trade
in mortal suspense for weeks, is on hand with a small output. John
Denman, of Bradford, and Thomas Mills were pioneers in the field and did
a turn in working the “mystery racket.” Hundreds assembled to watch the
torpedoing of their frontier-well, four miles east of Macksburg, kept in
abeyance a month for speculative purposes. Natives, with their wives and
families, lined the hillside to behold the novel sight. Col. John J.
Carter had arranged a system of flag-signals and stationed men to wave
the news to Dexter City, five miles away. The swiftest horse in the
county was at my service, to bear my message to the nearest
telegraph-office for transmission to the New-York Oil-Exchange. George
H. Nesbit, L. E. Mallory, Denman and a dozen other Pennsylvania
operators stood by. Hours were frittered away, until the exchanges had
closed, before the shell was lowered into the hole. The reaction
following the explosion came at last. A column of water rose mildly a
few feet in the air and—that was all! The much-vaunted well, which
throttled the great petroleum-industry three or four weeks, was
practically a failure and never rose above the five-barrel grade!
“The mountain labored and brought forth a mouse.”
A thousand barrels a day was the average yield of the south-eastern
division in 1896. George Rice’s refinery at Marietta treated the bulk of
the production at the primitive stage of developments. It was a
rice-pudding for Rice, who is a thoroughbred hustler and wastes no love
upon anyone who may encroach upon his particular preserve. He has loads
of pluck and enterprise and the staying quality that is desirable alike
in oilmen and oil-territory, to say nothing of bull-dogs and
prize-fighters.
“‘Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just,’
And four times he who gets his work in fust.”
The great Lima field, spreading over a dozen counties in North-western
Ohio, was the star performer of the Buckeye galaxy. Centering in Allen,
Hancock, Wood and Seneca, it has grasped big slices of the bordering
counties, with a strip of Lucas for good measure. Gas-indications in
Hancock, which resulted in a large well at Findlay in 1884, set the ball
rolling. Others were drilled forthwith, one on the Kramer farm getting
five barrels of oil a day. Findlay and Bowling Green had dipped into the
Trenton rock profitably, but nobody thought a huge oil-field at all
likely to be encountered. The Strawboard Works at Lima, in Allen county,
south-west of Hancock, needed more water and the manager decided to
drill for water and gas. The hole was punched through the Trenton rock
and pronounced a rank failure for gas. The company exploded a torpedo in
the barren rock on April twelfth, 1885. To the astonishment of owners
and spectators, the well sent out a stream of oil. It was tubed and
pumped fifteen barrels a day. Such was the modest beginning of an
oil-district destined to cause a greater stir than Grover Cleveland’s
boy-baby or Albert Edward’s green necktie.
There were no flies on Lima that glad day;
Great expectations had the right of way,
For the oil-boom had come, and come to stay.
It was “the old, old story.” The Queen of Sheba doubted the reports of
Solomon’s grandeur until she sized up the outfit personally and
declared: “The half has not been told.” Outsiders doubted the truth of a
paying strike at Lima, and doubted its importance after seeing the well
and the contents of the tank. The oil had a sickly tint and an odor that
“smelled to heaven.” People sniffed the dreadful aroma and proclaimed
the oil good only for fuel. A few Limans thought differently and
organized the Citizens’ Gas-Company to help play the game to a finish.
Not a cloud of gas, but a forty-barrel pumper, was the result in
December. Regardless of tint or odor, outsiders and insiders hastened to
get drilling-sites. By May first, 1886, sixteen wells on town-lots were
producing nicely. George P. Waldorf and James B. Townsend, residents of
Lima, were the first to lease a farm in the neighborhood, at one-eighth
royalty. They visited Bradford, returned with David Kirk and Isaac E.
Dean, formed the Trenton-Rock Oil-Company, leased many lots and
fifty-thousand acres of land, set strings of tools boring and soon piled
up a tidy production. The year closed with two-hundred wells doing
nine-thousand barrels, which the Buckeye Pipe-Line transported and
stored. Operations extended north-east and south-west, until
thirty-thousand wells were drilled and a half-million acres of territory
opened. Findlay, Lima, Fostoria and Toledo were strictly in the swim.
The deluge of grease swelled to mammoth proportions. Iron-tanks stored
thirty-million barrels, while iron-pipes bore other millions east and
west. Refineries used what they could, Ohio oil netting a smaller
percentage of kerosene than Pennsylvania crude, and in 1889 the price
crawled down to fifteen cents. Think of it—fifteen cents for forty-two
gallons of oil pumped from twelve-hundred feet beneath the earth’s
surface!
[Illustration: LIMA OIL-FIELDS.]
Developments covered large areas in Hancock and Wood counties, took in a
strip of Allen and Auglaize one to three miles wide, and extended
south-west to St. Mary’s, thirty miles from Lima. They reached
north-east into Sandusky and Ottawa, east into Seneca, north into Lucas
and west into Van Wert and across the state-line into Indiana. Wood
county stood at the top of the heap, with the rest as offshoots. Its
first well, drilled three miles north of North Baltimore by T. J.
Vandergrift & Co., cantered off in March, 1888, at four-hundred barrels.
The second, put down three miles east a year later by Bowling-Green
tenderfeet, rated as a fifteen-hundred barreler. Smith & Zeigler’s, on
the adjoining farm, outdid this three to one by bowling out
five-thousand barrels per diem. The plot thickened very rapidly. Gushers
tumbled into line at a dizzy pace. Cygnet lots boasted clusters of
derricks that marked king-pin strikes. Agents of the Standard bought
thousands of wells and the cream of the territory. The product fed a
myriad furnace-fires in Chicago and the half-mile battery of
steam-boilers at the Columbian Exposition. In Sandusky county, whose
earliest wells, at Gibsonburg in 1888, were by no means aggressive, T.
E. Kirkbride called the turn on a six-thousand-barrel spouter in
November, 1894. Altogether the Ohio oil-region, with its eastern pool in
Trumbull county, its south-eastern branch in Washington, Monroe and
Noble and its vast deposit of gas and petroleum in the north-western
section, was a startling revelation. But all the territory was not
velvet, as eight-thousand dry-holes attest. No leopard could be more
spotted. The present average yield of the wells is under four barrels,
with sixty-six cents as the average price last year. Five-sixths of the
twenty-four-million barrels Ohio produced in 1896 must be credited to
the north-western colossus.
Thomas E. Kirkbride, the man that owned the well that raised the smell
that set the pace that led the race that broke the slate that it was
fate that Coxey’s state should elevate, hails from Tidioute, where his
parents located in 1866. He started in oil young, operated in the Warren
and Bradford fields, caught the Ohio fever and landed at Findlay in
1890. His first ventures were around Gibsonburg, four miles west of
which, on the Jones farm, he drilled the gusher that smashed the Lima
record and fattened his bank-account six figures.
Mr. Kirkbride lives at Toledo, in a handsome home gladdened by a devoted
wife and five children. S. M. Jones, the distinguished Mayor of Toledo,
also came from the Keystone State. He drilled in the lower oil-districts
in 1868, joined the tide for Bradford and located at Duke Centre. Thence
he migrated to Toledo, patented a sucker-rod improvement, erected a big
factory, dabbled skilfully in municipal affairs, advocated civic reforms
and won the mayoralty on the grand platform of “eight hours work a day.”
Mr. Jones helped organize the Western Oilmen’s Association, which
occupies fine quarters in the heart of the city. There Fred Boden, W. J.
McCullagh, Frank Steele, C. A. Lupher and other Keystoners often hang
out to welcome old friends from Pennsylvania. W. B. Nolan, who pumped at
Oil City in 1864 and operated from Edenburg to Bradford, has drilled
five-hundred wells in Ohio for himself or by contract. C. C. Harris, who
sold to the Ohio Oil-Company in 1890 for one-hundred-thousand dollars,
has put down four-hundred. Truly the Buckeye State is no slouch in
petroleum.
[Illustration: WELLS ON TOWN LOTS AT CYGNET, OHIO.]
A farmer in the Black Swamp of Wood county, half-starved on corn-bread
and bad water, leased his forty-acre patch for oil-purposes. The first
well, which was sunk a hundred yards from his cabin, flowed two-thousand
barrels a day. When the spurt began the old fellow happened to be
chopping wood beside his door. He saw the mass of oil climb into the
atmosphere, flung down his axe and shouted: “Bet yer life, no more
corn-dodgers an’ watered whisky for this chicken!”
A barren streak in Mercer and Van Wert, on Ohio’s western border, seemed
to demonstrate the folly of seeking an extension of the Lima belt in
Indiana, despite convincing symptoms of oil at Geneva. To test the
matter the Northern-Indiana Oil-Company, composed mainly of Lima
operators, leased five-thousand acres along the boundary between Adams
and Jay counties and drilled several wells in 1892. Nearly the whole
range proved productive, showing that the belt stretched westward.
Portions of Wells, Blackford, Grant and Huntingdon joined the procession
in due course. Last year an important pool was unearthed near
Alexandria, Madison county, twenty-five miles south-west of the original
field, which demanded a pipe-line to Montpelier. This newest accession
is in the town of Peru, with spurs quite close to Cass county. This has
been the stellar attraction of Hoosierdom, fifty-five wells completed in
October of 1897 yielding thirty-five-hundred barrels. Roan, New Waverley
and Denver have not escaped and the drill has invaded Kokomo, twenty
miles south. Peru is the fad of the hour, the pride of the Wabash. Just
clear across the state, several wells at Terre Haute have revealed the
presence of sand, gas and oil. The average price of Indiana crude in
1896 was sixty-three cents, and five-million barrels were produced.
[Illustration: BIT OF INDIANA OIL-TERRITORY.]
The Indiana oil-region is a level country, about forty miles long east
and west and three to four wide. The oil, dark green in color and
thirty-six gravity, is found in the Trenton limestone, at a depth of a
thousand feet. Thirty to a hundred feet of driving-pipe and
three-hundred feet of casing are needed in each well. The main belt runs
in regular pools and may be considered ten-barrel territory. The
aggregate production of the field is twelve to fifteen-thousand barrels
a day. The largest well started at two-thousand barrels and some have
records of five-hundred to eight-hundred. The great gas-field, south of
the oil-belt, has boomed manufactures and contributed vastly to the
wealth of the Hoosiers.
Last May the Byram Oil-Company of Indianapolis finished the first
oil-well, within sight of the village of Dundee, ever drilled by
electricity. A fifty-horse dynamo, which runs the small motors at a
dozen wells on the tract, supplied the power. Gas is used under the
boilers in the power-house, a substantial frame-building, which shelters
the central station. The entire plant cost five-thousand dollars and the
company votes it a success of the first magnitude.
Hiram Tewksbury, of Montpelier, who pays taxes on six-hundred acres of
land in Wells county, is one of the few men whom getting into a lawsuit
enriched. When the Indiana field was in its infancy he contracted to
purchase the Howard farm for some oilmen, who refused to take it off his
hands and were sustained by the Court. He sued Howard to take it back,
the Supreme Court decided against him and Tewksbury had to keep the
land. It turned out to be the bosom of an oil-pool, the cream of the
district. One acre brought Tewksbury eleven-thousand dollars, and for
months his royalty exceeded five-hundred dollars a week.
[Illustration: JAMES W. ROWLAND.]
Peru, a natty place of ten-thousand inhabitants, twelve miles east of
Logansport, is the Indiana sensation of the year. Last June a bevy of
citizens drilled a duster on the Wallace farm, two miles east. This dose
of Peruvian bark spurred them to drill on the north-west edge of town in
July. The well flowed fifteen barrels a day through the casing, at
twenty feet in the Trenton rock, increasing ten-fold when tubed and
pumped. At once the oil craze ran riot in the wild rush for leases.
Tourists from Ohio and Pennsylvania led the long procession of
land-seekers. The Klondyke pool east of Toledo and the Hume south of
Lima were forgotten temporarily. Scores of slick wells demolished the
theory of a mere “pocket,” which the absence of gas and scarcity of
salt-water led would-be scientists to expect at the first blush. The
good work has crowded ahead and Peru roosts high on the petroleum-perch
in the center of the patch.
A dandy thing it is to be on top,
Provided you don’t have to take a drop
And come down with a thud, kerflop.
[Illustration: H. C. ZEIGLER.]
Thirteen per cent. of the five-thousand wells drilled in Benjamin
Harrison’s state are dry-holes. Montpelier has benefited largely from
operations in Wells, Blackford and Jay counties. The Sibley Oil-Company,
Isaac N. Patterson, the Rowland-Zeigler Oil-Company and other
Pennsylvania firms and individuals have been prominent in the field. Mr.
Patterson lives at Franklin, is president of the savings bank and has
figured extensively in the chief districts since Petroleum Centre and
Pithole first tinctured the horizon a flaming red. James W. Rowland quit
mercantile-life in Franklin to conduct a bank at Emlenton and embark in
the oil-business. The success he richly merited attended him in banking,
producing and refining. He gained a liberal fortune, returned to
Franklin and took a leading share in developing the Indiana region. Mr.
Rowland is a first-class man of affairs, genial and generous, true to
his convictions, loyal in his friendships and always ready to further a
good cause. The Rowland-Zeigler Company sold to the Standard recently at
a price which hugged a quarter-million dollars closely. H. C. Zeigler,
who managed and was president of the company, began his oil-career as
owner of an interest in the first two producing wells at Raymilton,
drilled in 1869. Operating at Pleasantville a short season, the
fourth-sand development attracted him to Petrolia. In 1873 he and J. D.
Ritchey and W. T. Jackson procured a charter for the Cleveland
Pipe-Line, which was sold to S. D. Karns and merged into the Karns Line.
Assisting in the management of the Karns Line until the United Lines
absorbed it, he then engaged actively in producing oil. His circuit of
operations comprised Bullion, Cogley, Thorn Creek, Cherry Grove,
Bradford and Richburg. Moving westward, he participated in the early
development of the Ohio and Indiana fields. In company with Jacob S.
Smith he established the plant that supplied natural-gas to Chicago. His
master-stroke was the organization of the Rowland-Zeigler Company, which
alone realized him a competence. Mr. Zeigler is in his prime, hearty and
vigorous, quick to relieve distress and prompt to aid the right. None
better deserves the compliment George D. Prentice paid Mark M. Pomeroy:
“He is a brick.”
John and Michael Cudahy, behind whom Philip Armour, the Swifts,
Fairbanks and Nelson Morris, the Chicago beef-magnates, are supposed to
pose, in 1895 purchased a huge slice of the Indiana field, laid a
pipe-line to the Windy City and talked of building a refinery that would
outshine the Standard giant at Whiting. The brothers are sons of an
Irish resident of Milwaukee, who taught them his own trade of
meat-packing. Michael Cudahy went to Chicago to manage a branch for John
Plankington, whom the Armours succeeded, and John “came tumbling after.”
John piled up millions by plunges in pork and lard that won him the
soubriquet of “Daring Jack” Cudahy, while Michael stuck to Armour
faithfully. John toppled and lost his wealth, Michael started him
afresh, he paid off a million of debts and built up another fortune.
Michael, several times a millionaire, has studied the swine as Sir John
Lubbock has studied the ant. No part of the hog is wasted under his
trained system, but thus far the Cudahys have not been able to hog the
Hoosier oil-fields.
C. H. Shattuck had the first well in West Virginia drilled for oil. He
came from Michigan in the fall of 1859, secured land in Wirt county and
bored one-hundred feet by the tedious spring-pole process. The well was
on the bank of the Hughes river, from which the natives skimmed off a
greasy fluid to use for rheumatism and bruises. It was dry and Shattuck
settled at Parkersburg, his present abode. At Burning Springs a
“disagreeable fluid” flooded a salt-well, which the owner quit in
disgust. General Samuel Karns, of Pennsylvania, and his nephew, S. D.
Karns, rigged it up in 1860 and pumped considerable oil. The shallow
territory was operated extensively. Ford & Hanlon bored on Oil-Spring
Run, Ritchie county, in 1861-2, finding heavy oil in paying quantities.
W. H. Moore started the phenomenal eruption at Volcano in 1863, by
drilling the first well, which produced eight-thousand barrels of
lubricating oil. Sheafer & Steen’s, the second well, was a good second
and the Cornfield pumped seven-thousand barrels of thirty-five-gravity
oil in six months. William C. Stiles and the Oil-Run Petroleum Company
punched scores of wells. Volcano perched on the lubricating pedestal for
years, but it is now extinct. E. L. Gale—he built the railroad
freight-houses at Aspinwall and Panama and owned the site of Joliet and
half the land on which Milwaukee thrives—in 1854 purchased two-thousand
acres of bush twenty-five miles from Parkersburg. In 1866 the celebrated
Shaw well, the first of any note on his tract, flowed one-hundred
barrels of twenty-six-degree oil. Gale sent samples to the Paris
Exposition in 1867 and received the only gold-medal awarded for natural
oils. The Shaw well kicked up a fuss, leases brought large bonuses,
excitement ran high and the “Gale Oil Field” was king of the hour.
Land-grabbers annoyed Gale, who declined a million dollars for his
property. He routed the herd and died at an advanced age, leaving his
heirs ample means to weather the severest financial gale. The war had
driven northern operators from the field and heavy-oil developments
cleared the coast for the next act on the program.
Charles B. Traverneir, in the spring of 1883, on Rock Run, put down the
first deep well in West Virginia. It encountered a strong flow of oil at
twenty-one-hundred feet and yielded for eleven years. Volcano and
Parkersburg had retired and light-oil territory was the object of the
ambitious wildcatter. At Eureka, situated in a plain contiguous to the
Ohio river, Brown & Rose struck the third sand in April, 1886, at
thirteen-hundred feet. The well flowed seven-hundred barrels of
forty-four-gravity oil, similar to the Macksburg variety and equal to
the Pennsylvania article for refining. The derrick burned, with the
tools at the bottom of the well, and the yield decreased to
three-hundred barrels in May. Oilmen pronounced Eureka the coming
oil-town and farmers asked ridiculous prices for their lands. Bradford
parties leased numerous tracts and bounced the drill merrily. The third
sand in West Virginia was found in what are known as “oil breaks,” at
irregular depths and sometimes cropping out upon the surface. Eureka is
still a center of activity. The surrounding country resembles the
Washington district in appearance and fertility of the soil. In 1891
Thomas Mills, who operated at Tionesta in 1862 and at Macksburg in
1883-4, leased a bundle of lands near Sistersville and sank a well
sixteen-hundred feet. A glut of salt-water induced him to sell out
cheap. The first important results were obtained on the Ohio side of the
Ohio river, where many wells were bored. The Polecat well, drilled in
1890, daily pumped fifty barrels of oil and two-thousand of salt-water,
bringing Sistersville forward a peg. Eight wells produced a thousand
barrels of green oil per day in May of 1892. Operating was costly and
only wealthy individuals or companies could afford to take the risks of
opening such a field. Captain J. T. Jones, J. M. Guffey, Murphy &
Jennings, the Carter Oil-Company, the Devonian Oil-Company, the Forest
Oil-Company and the South-Penn have reduced the business to an exact
science and secured a large production. Sistersville, named from the two
Welles sisters, who once owned the site of the town, has been a magnet
to petroleumites for two years. Gushers worthy of Butler or Allegheny
have been let loose in Tyler, Wood, Ritchie, Marion and Doddridge. The
Big Moses, on Indian Creek, is a first-class gasser. Morgantown,
Mannington and Sistersville are as familiar names as McDonald,
Millerstown or Parker. Pipe-lines handle the product and old-timers from
Bradford, Warren and Petrolia are seen at every turn. West-Virginia is
on top for the moment, with the tendency southward and operators eagerly
seeking more petroleum-worlds to conquer in Kentucky and Tennessee.
She was a radiant Sistersville girl. She descended the stairs quietly
and laid her hand on the knob of the door, hoping to steal out
stealthily in the gray dawn. Her father stood in the porch and she was
discovered. “My daughter,” said the white-haired old gentleman, “what is
that—what are those you have on?” She hung her head and turned the
door-knob uneasily back and forth between her fingers, but did not
answer. “Did you not promise me,” the old man went on, “that if I bought
you a bicycle you would not wear—that is, you would ride in skirts?” She
stepped impulsively toward him and paused. “Yes, father,” she said, “I
did and I meant it. But I didn’t know these then. The more I saw of them
the better I liked them. They improve on acquaintance, father. They grow
on one——” “My daughter,” he interrupted, “Eve’s garments grew on her!”
And so it has been with the West-Virginia oil-field—it grows on one and
the more he sees of it the better he likes it.
Long after the Ruffners’ time Tyler county, the heart of the
West-Virginia region, was a backwoods district, two generations behind
the age and traveling at an ice-wagon gait, until it caught “the glow of
the light to come.” Its beginning was small, but men who sneer at little
things merely show that they have sat on a tack and been worsted in the
fray. It has taken grit and perseverance to bring a hundred-thousand
barrels of oil a day from the bowels of the earth in Pennsylvania, Ohio,
West-Virginia and Indiana. The man who has not a liberal stock of these
qualities should steep himself in brine before engaging in
oil-operations. He will only hit the nail on the thumb and be as badly
fooled as the chump who deems he has a cinch on heaven because he never
stole sheep. Petroleum is all right and a long way from its ninth
inning. The alarmist who thinks it is playing out would have awakened
Noah with the cry of “Fire!”
[Illustration: BIG MOSES GAS-WELL IN WEST VIRGINIA.]
Edward H. Jennings is among the most enterprising and fortunate
operators in West Virginia. His Kanawha Oil Company has a legion of
tip-top wells and miles of approved territory. Like his deceased father,
a pioneer in Armstrong and Butler, he decides promptly and acts
vigorously. With James M. Guffey, John H. Galey and one or two others he
owned the phenomenal Matthews well and the richest territory at
McDonald. The same gentlemen now own the famous Trade-Dollar Mine in
Idaho, the greatest silver-mine on earth to-day, and gold-mines in
California, Colorado and Nova Scotia that yield bountiful returns. Mr.
Jennings is president of the Columbia Bank and lives in the beautiful
East End of Pittsburg. He ranks high in business and finance. Brainy,
cultured, energetic and courageous, Mr. Jennings scored his mark through
well-directed effort and systematic industry
Womanly intuition is a hummer that discounts science, philosophy and
red-tape. Mrs. Katherine E. Reed died at Sistersville in June of 1896.
Her foresight secured fortunes for herself and many other in Tyler
county. Left a widow five years ago, with eight children and a farm that
would starve goats to death, she leased the land for oil-purposes. The
test-well proving dry, Mrs. Reed implored the men to try again at a spot
she had proposed for the first venture. The drillers were hard up, but
consented to make a second trial when the good woman agreed to board
them for nothing in case no oil was found. The well was the biggest
gusher in the bundle. To-day it is producing largely and is known oil
over West Virginia as “The Big Kate.” Mrs. Reed cleared
two-hundred-thousand dollars from the sterile tract, which would sell
for as much more yet, and her children and neighbors are independent for
life.
Do any of the Pioneers on Kanawha remember “Dick” Timms’s Half-way
House? The weather-beaten sign bore the legend, in faded letters: “Rest
for the Weary. R. Timms.” The exterior was rough and unpainted, but
inside was cheery and homelike in its snugness. When travelers rode up
to the door “Uncle Dick,” in full uniform of shirt and pantaloons,
barefooted and hatless, rough and uncouth in speech and appearance, but
with a heart so big that it made his fat body bulge and his whole face
light up with a cheerful smile, stood ready with his welcome salutation
of “Howdy, howdy? ’Light; come in.”
Colorado counts confidently upon a production sufficient to give the
Centennial State a solid lodgment in the petroleum-column. Its earliest
development was a small well on the Lobach ranch, near Florence, in
1882. Other wells yielded enough crude to warrant the erection of a
refinery in 1885, by the Arkansas-Valley Oil-Company, to which the
United Oil-Company has succeeded. The United pumps ten or twelve-hundred
barrels a day from forty wells, refining the product into illuminating
oils, gasoline and lubricants of superior quality. The Florence
Oil-Company pumps a dozen wells, owns a little refinery and holds large
blocks of leased lands. The Rocky-Mountain Oil-Company, organized in
1890, has drilled forty-five wells south of the town of Florence,
twenty-four of which yield three-hundred barrels a day. The Eureka
Company is also operating briskly. The production of the Colorado region
is nearly two-thousand barrels a day, derived from wells that average
twenty-five hundred feet in depth, too expensive for persons of slender
means to tamper with.
The lively folks who drill in Colorado
May justly be excused for some bravado,
Because their hopes are not based on a shadow.
The Salt-Creek oil-field, the first worked in Wyoming, is in the
northern part of Natrona and the southern part of Johnson county, fifty
miles north of Caspar, the terminus of the Fremont, Elkhorn &
Missouri-Valley Railroad. As known to-day the field is eighteen by
thirty miles. It lies along Salt Creek and its tributaries, which drain
northward and empty into Powder River, and is a rough country, cut by
deep gulches, beneath which there are table-lands of small extent.
Vegetation is scanty and timber is found only on the highest bluffs. In
1889 the Pennsylvania Oil-Company, composed of Pennsylvanians and under
the management of George B. McCalmont, located on Salt Creek and drilled
a well which, early in the spring of 1890, struck oil. Obstacles of no
small magnitude were met with. The oil had to be freighted fifty miles
by wagon; railroad-freights were controlled by eastern oil producers,
rates that would justify shipments seemed almost impossible, and the oil
had to be proved before it could be placed upon the market in
competition with well-known brands. In the face of these difficulties
the company continued work, and in the spring of 1894 succeeded in
making arrangements to ship crude-oil. Storage-tanks were erected at the
wells and at the railroad, and a refinery is now in operation at Caspar.
The wells vary in depth from nine-hundred to fifteen-hundred feet and
three companies are operating. The oil is a valuable lubricant. The
transportation of the oil to the railroad is effected by freight-wagons
of the ordinary sort. Behind them is a fourth wagon, or the freighter’s
home, which has wide boards projecting from the sides of the wagon-box
over the wheels, making a box of unusual width covered with heavy canvas
over the ordinary wagon-bows and provided with a window in the back, a
door in front, a bed, cook-stove, table, cupboard and the necessary
equipment for keeping house. In this house on wheels the freighter
passes the night, and in breaking camp he is not bothered with his
camp-outfit. This novelty has been recently introduced by Mr. Johnson,
the leading freighter for the Pennsylvania Company. With sixteen mules
he draws his four wagons with nine tons of oil, over a very sandy road.
Wyoming oil sells high at Caspar, which is becoming a place of some
consequence and may soon figure as the state-metropolis. It was a fort
in the days of wild beasts and wilder Indians. Soft rock, with a
provoking tendency to cave-in, and artesian water, impregnated with
sulphur and found just above the oil-sand, rendered drilling a difficult
task. The best well in the bunch produces from a rock five-hundred feet
down, while the deepest is sixteen-hundred feet and the sand is fifty
feet thick. Oil-basins on Caspar Creek, Powder River, Salt Creek and
Poison Spider indicate the existence of petroleum over a wide section of
the state. Wells on Salt Creek resemble those in Russia. True-blue
Wyomingites proudly anticipate the day when their gilt-edged basin will
hit the Baku mastodons a Fitzsimmons sock-dolager in the solar-plexus.
My! Won’t the Czar feel like the deuceovitch
When the Wyoming wells cut looseovitch
And Baku spouters must vamooseovitch?
[Illustration: TWELVE HORSES AND THREE WAGONS FOR HAULING OIL, AT
CASPAR, WYOMING, WITH “BARNEY” M’CALMONT IN THE FOREGROUND.]
William M. Mills, boring for gas in 1892 near the east side of Neodesha,
Wilson county, Kansas, found sand with oil in two wells and plugged the
holes. John H. Galey, ever awake to the importance of prospective
territory, heard the news and proceeded to investigate. He examined the
sand and the oil—almost black in color and of heavy gravity—thought
favorably of the country, enlisted Mills for the campaign, leased
sixty-thousand acres for himself and James M. Guffey, located a number
of wells and prepared for extensive developments. Guffey & Galey’s first
well was rather slim. Their second, at Thayer, fourteen miles
north-east, was also small. Their third, twenty-five miles farther
north-east, at Humbolt, Allen county, had sand and gas and a feeble show
of oil. Similar results forty miles south-west of Neodesha confirmed
their opinion of plenty spotted territory to be worth testing to a
finish. They drilled twenty wells in the vicinity of Neodesha, the
majority of them fair. Several out of eighteen put down around Thayer,
in the winter of 1893-4, rated in the medium class. The principal
production of the Kansas field to-day—about five-hundred barrels derived
from a hundred or more wells—is at these two points. In all Guffey &
Galey drilled one-hundred-and-forty wells, averaging eight-hundred feet
deep and half of them dry, and sold to the Forest Oil-Company in 1895.
[Illustration: WHERE OIL IS SOUGHT IN KANSAS.]
E. E. Crocker, son of the Bradford pioneer, superintended the drilling
of numerous wells for the Forest in 1896-7. Scattered over Bourbon,
Crawford, Allen, Neosho, Woodson, Elk, Wilson and Montgomery counties,
two-thirds of these ventures were dusters. Three at Humboldt are the
farthest north that produce any oil. The farthest south are near Sedan
and Peru, Chautauqua county. This embraces about seventy-five miles
north-east and south-west. The whole district is as uncertain as the age
of the oldest Betsey Bobbet in the pack. Dry-holes may surround a fair
strike. The sand runs from eight to twenty feet. The oil is extremely
dark, twenty to thirty-five gravity, with asphalt base, no paraffine and
no sulphur. From the company’s refinery at Neodesha, which has a
capacity of one-thousand barrels, the first shipment of kerosene was
made last June. The refinery is designed to supply Kansas and portions
of Nebraska and Missouri. Most of the crude is produced so near the
refinery that pipe-lines have not been laid to transport it.
Gas is struck ninety to a hundred feet below the oil-sand, sometimes in
large quantity and occasionally at about four-hundred feet from the
surface. Low pressure and water prevent piping gas in the shallow wells
long distances. It was a Fourth of July when the vapor illuminant was
first lighted at Neodesha. Enthusiasm and patriotism drew thousands to
the celebration. Jerry Simpson’s candidacy and Peffer’s whiskers were
side-tracked and forgotten. Darkness gathered and the impatient throng
waited for the torch to be applied to the tall stand-pipes. Their cheers
might be heard in Oklahoma when masses of flame lit up the sky and
bathed the town in a lurid glare.
The Guiper Oil-Company, managed by William Guiper of Oil City, the
Palmer Oil-Company and James Amm & Co. have drilled many wells that did
not bear the market a little bit. Across the Kansas border, at Eufala,
Indian Territory, the Enterprise Oil-Company bored twenty-eight-hundred
feet without finding the stuff. Two wells in Creek county had white-sand
and a trifle of amber-oil at seven-hundred and a thousand feet. The
Cherokee Oil-Company drilled ten wells that produced a moderate amount
of heavy-oil from two slates. Wisconsin parties, making deep tests on
the Cherokee border, indulge in fond hopes that “Bleeding Kansas” and
the country south may shortly bleed petroleum from a half-score rich
arteries.
Five wells near Litchfield, Illinois, pump fifty gallons of
lubricating-oil a day. Two in Bates county, Missouri, dribble enough to
grease wagon-axles and farm-implements. A New-York syndicate has
obtained large concessions of land from the government and is drilling
at Jalapa, Mexico, where oil was found in shallow wells a few years ago.
In Kentucky a host of small or dry wells have gone down since 1894. The
Bobs-Bar well, the only one producing in Tennessee, drilled in 1896,
flowed fifty barrels an hour, caught fire the first night and afterwards
pumped sixty barrels a day for a season.
Believing an artesian-well would supply the community with abundant pure
water, a local company at Corsicana, Navarro county, Texas, three years
ago started the tools to pierce the “joint clay” in the south-west end
of town. Sixteen years before a well drilled nine-hundred feet failed to
accomplish this purpose and was filled up. Geologists gravely announced
that water—unfit to use at that—could not be had within
thirty-five-hundred feet. The company kept right along. At ten-hundred
feet the clay ceased and twenty feet of sandy shale, soft and bluish,
followed. Oil, real petroleum, hardly inferior to the best in
Pennsylvania, flowed strongly. Doubting Thomases felt sure this
unexpected glut of oil settled the water-question in the negative and
advised tubing the well. The company cased off the oil, resumed
drilling, pierced five-hundred feet more of “joint clay,” four-hundred
feet of “Dallas chalk” and another immense layer of clay. At twenty-five
hundred feet a crystal current of water gushed forth to the rhythm of
fifteen-thousand gallons an hour. The water-problem was solved happily,
the company was amply vindicated and the Corsicanans were
correspondingly jubilant. The geological freaks were confounded. Of
course, they knew more about the creation than Moses and could upset
Genesis in one round, but a six-inch hole on their own ground put them
floundering in the soup.
John H. Galey read a brief report of the water-well and visited
Corsicana “on the quiet.” He had cart-loads of experience in oil-matters
and a faculty for opening new fields. He drilled on Oil Creek in the
sixties, had a hand in the Pithole pie, broadened the Pleasantville
limit, set the Parker district going, went to the front in Butler and
let no patch of creamy territory escape his vigilant eye. In Kansas he
had located and drilled the first wells—at Neodesha and Thayer—that
brought into play the only pools that have paid their way. He spent a
year in Texas picking up lands and putting down wells. As in Kansas, his
first and second wells were ten or twelve miles apart and both touched
the jugular. He sold his entire interest, four companies entered the
field and thirty wells are doing a thousand barrels a day. The first car
of Corsicana oil was shipped last July, amid the huzzas of a crowd of
cheering citizens. Senator Roger Q. Mills, the Democratic statesman, is
the lucky owner of a thousand acres of land on the outskirts of town.
The property has been leased and it bids fair to make the Senator a
millionaire. Petroleum may yet be the brightest star in the
constellation of the Lone-Star State.
California is not content to have gold-mines, overgrown trees and
tropical fruits and leave petroleum out in the cold. For years
developments have been carried on, centering finally at Los Angeles.
City-lots are punctured with holes and three-hundred wells have been
drilled on two-hundred acres. Samuel M. Jones, formerly of the
Pennsylvania oil-region and now president of the Acme Sucker-Rod-Company
of Toledo, leveled his kodak at the Los-Angeles wells in 1895, securing
the view printed in the cut. Hon. W. L. Hardison, who operated in the
Clarion and Bradford fields and served a couple of terms in the
Legislature, and Lyman Stewart, of Titusville, have been largely
interested in the California field for ten years. Los-Angeles wells are
seven to nine-hundred feet deep, yield six barrels to seventy-five at
the start and employ six-hundred men. The oil is used for fuel and
lubrication, produces superior asphaltum and a distillate for
stove-burners and gasoline-engines. It cannot be refined profitably for
illuminating. The Los-Angeles field, about one mile long and six-hundred
feet wide, had a small beginning. The first wells, near the
Second-Street Park, were small, only to the first sand—four-hundred
feet—and yielded poorly. The operators lacked knowledge and bunched the
holes as closely as sardines in a box. Deeper drilling revealed richer
strata, from which four-hundred wells are producing eighteen-hundred
barrels a day. Railways, electric lines and manufacturing establishments
consume the bulk of the output—equivalent to seven-hundred tons of coal
daily—for fuel. The best wells have been pumping twenty months to two
years, a few starting at three-hundred barrels for a week.
Twenty-five-hundred dollars is the average cost of a California well and
the total yield of the district approximates two-million barrels up to
date.
[Illustration: OIL-WELLS AT LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.]
Los Angeles is a genuine California town, with oil-wells as an extra
feature. Derricks cluster on Belmont Hill, State street, Lakeshore
avenue, Second street, and leading thoroughfares. A six-inch line
conveys crude to the railroads and car-tanks are shipped over the
Southern Pacific and Santa Fé routes. At least one of the preachers
seems to be drilling “on the belt,” if a tourist’s tale of a prayer he
offered be true. Here it is:
“O, Lord! we pray that the excursion train going east this morning may
not run off the track and kill any church-members that may be on board.
Thou knowest it is bad enough to run oil-wells on Sunday, but worse to
run Sunday excursions. Church-members on Sunday excursions are not in
condition to die. In addition to this, it is embarrassing to a minister
to officiate at a funeral of a member of the church who has been killed
on a Sunday excursion. Keep the train on the track and preserve it from
any calamity, that all church-members among the excursionists may have
opportunity for repentance, that their sins may be forgiven. We ask it
for Christ’s sake. Amen.”
With juicy Ohio, plump West Virginia, nutritious Indiana, succulent
California, appetizing Texas and many other luscious bivalves to keep
fat Pennsylvania company, there is no lack of oysters in the stew.
SOME OF THE BOYS.
Michael Murphy, of “mystery” fame, lives in Chester county.
William L. Lay, founder of South Oil-City, died last winter.
W. J. Welch, a respected citizen, who operated at Bullion and Bradford
and for years belonged to the Oil-City Exchange, died in 1897.
Ruel A. Watson, an active broker, as he lay gasping for breath, raised
his head, asked an attendant “What’s the market?” sank back on his
pillow and expired. “The ruling passion is strong in death.”
John Vanausdall, partner of William Phillips in the biggest well on Oil
Creek, left his home at Oil City in the morning, took ill at Petrolia
and telegraphed for his wife. She reached his bedside just as he drew
his last breath.
A man may seem to be a bang-up seraph,
Yet be a proper subject for the sheriff.
John Wallace, an early oil-operator at Rouseville and merchant at Rynd,
died in 1880. Born in Great Britain, he served in the English army,
participated in the Crimean war and was one of the “Gallant Six Hundred”
in the desperate charge at Balaklava immortalized by Tennyson.
The late H. L. McCance, long secretary of the Oil-City Exchange, was the
Thomas Nast of Oildom. Two of his cartoons—“When Oil is Seventy Cents”
and “When Oil is Three Dollars”—in this volume and those exposing the
South-Improvement infamy were especially striking.
B. D. J. McKeown is probably the only millionaire ball-player in the
United States. He belongs to the Washington team, which is a member of
the Pennsylvania State-League, and has played first base with the nine
the entire season. He is a son of the late John McKeown, a keen man of
affairs, a clean fielder, heavy batter and swift base-runner.
Many a chap who thinks he’s sure of Heaven,
But in his make-up lacks the kindly leaven,
Will find Old Nick on hand with a replevin.
Col. W. H. Kinter, of Oil City, a man of kindliest impulses, genial and
whole-souled, greeting a neighbor one Sunday evening, remarked:
“Goodnight, old boy—no, make it good-bye; we may never meet again!” He
retired in excellent health and spirits. Next morning, feeling drowsy,
he asked his wife—a daughter of Hamilton McClintock—to bring him a cup
of tea. She returned in a short time to find her husband asleep in
death.
The irrepressible “Sam” Blakely originated the term “shuffle,” which he
often practiced in his dealings in the oil-exchanges, and the phrase,
“Boys, don’t take off your shirts!” This expression spread far and wide
and was actually repeated by Osman Pasha—if the cablegrams told the
truth—at the battle of Plevna, when his troops wavered an instant in the
face of a dreadful rain of bullets. “Sam” also inaugurated the custom of
drinking Rhine-wine. Once he constituted himself a committee of one to
celebrate the Fourth of July at Parker. He printed a great lot of
posters, which announced a celebration on a gorgeous scale—horse-races,
climbing the greased pole, boat-races, orations, fireworks and other
attractions. These were posted about the city and on barns and fences
within a radius of ten miles. A friend asked him how his celebration was
likely to come off. “Oh,” he said, “we’re going to get all the hayseeds
in here and then we’ll give them the great kibosh.” On the glorious day
“Sam” mounted a box in front of the Columbia hose-house and delivered an
oration before four-thousand people, who pronounced it the funniest
thing they ever heard and accepted the situation good-naturedly. Some
impromptu games were got up and the day passed off pleasantly.
[Illustration: POND-FRESHET AT OIL CITY, MARCH, 1863.]
XV.
FROM THE WELL TO THE LAMP.
TRANSPORTING CRUDE-OIL BY WAGONS AND BOATS—UNFATHOMABLE MUD
AND SWEARING TEAMSTERS—POND FRESHETS—ESTABLISHMENT OF
PIPE-LINES—NATIONAL-TRANSIT COMPANY AND SOME OF ITS
OFFICERS—SPECULATION IN CERTIFICATES—EXCHANGES AT PROMINENT
POINTS—THE PRODUCT THAT ILLUMINES THE WORLD AT VARIOUS STAGES OF
PROGRESS.
----------
“Lamps were gleaming everywhere, gleaming from huge banks of
flowers.”—_Wilson Barrett._
“Nature must give way to Art.”—_Jonathan Swift._
“The flighty purpose never is o’ertook, unless the deed go with
it.”—_Shakespeare._
“My kingdom for a horse to haul my oil.”—_Richard III. Revised._
“We’ll all dip oil, and we’ll all dip oil,
We’ll dip, dip, dip, and we’ll all dip oil.”—_Pond-Freshet Song._
“Lines of truth run through the world of thought as pipe-lines to the
sea.”—_Mrs. C. A. Babcock._
“These be piping times.”—Popular Saw.
“Seneca predicted another hemisphere, but Columbus presented
it.”—_Collins._
“Nature begets Merit and Fortune brings it into play.”—_La
Rochefoucauld._
“The wise and active conquer difficulties by daring to attempt
them.”—_Rowe._
“Perfection is attained by slow degrees.”—_Voltaire._
“One little bull on oil was I,
Bought a lot when the stuff was high,
Sold when low and it pumped me dry,
One little bull on oil.”—_Oil City Blizzard._
“It is just as dangerous to speculate in kerosene as to kindle the fire
with it.”—_Boston Herald._
----------
The tribulations of early operators did not cease with drilling and
tubing their wells. Oil might flow or be pumped readily, but it could
neither transport nor sell itself. Crude in the tank was not always
money in the purse without a good deal of engineering. The Irishman’s
contrary pig, which he headed for Cork to drive to Dublin, was much less
trouble to raise than to get to market. The first wells on Oil Creek
were so close to the water that the stuff could be loaded directly into
canoes or dug-outs and floated to the mouth of the stream. This
arrangement, despite its apparent convenience, had serious drawbacks.
The creek was too low in dry weather for navigation, except possibly by
the Mississippi craft that slipped along easily on the morning dew. To
overcome this difficulty recourse was had to artificial methods when the
production increased sufficiently to introduce flat-boats, which
dispensed with barrels and freighted the oil in bulk. The system of
pond-freshets was adopted. A dam at the saw-mill near the Drake well
stored the fluid until the time agreed upon to open the gates and let
the imprisoned waters escape. Rev. A. L. Dubbs was appointed
superintendent and shippers were assessed for the use of the water
stored in the pond. Usually two-hundred to eight-hundred boats—boats of
all shapes and sizes, from square-keeled barges, divided into
compartments by cross-partitions, to slim-pointed guipers—were pulled up
the stream by horses once or twice a week to be filled at the wells and
await the rushing waters. Expert rivermen, accustomed to dodging snags
and rocks in inland streams, managed the fleet. These skilled pilots
assumed the responsibility of delivering the oil to the larger boats at
Oil City, for conveyance to Pittsburg, at one-hundred to two-hundred
dollars per trip.
[Illustration: HOW OIL IS TRANSPORTED IN RUSSIA—HAULING EMPTY BARRELS.]
At the appointed moment the flood-gates were opened and the water rushed
forth, increasing the depth of the creek two or three feet. The boatmen
stood by their lines, to cast loose when the current was precisely
right. Sound judgment was required. The loaded boat, if let go too soon,
ran the risk of grounding in the first shallow-place, to be battered
into kindling-wood by those coming after. Such accidents occurred
frequently, resulting in a general jam and loss of vessels and cargoes.
The scene was more exciting than a three-ringed circus. Property and
life were imperiled, boats were ground to fragments, thousands of
barrels of oil were spilled and the tangle seemed inextricable. Men,
women and children lined the banks of the stream for miles, intently
watching the spectacle. Persons of all nationalities, kindreds and
conditions vociferated in their diversified jargon, producing a
confusion of tongues that outbabeled Babel three to one. Men of wealth
and refinement, bespattered and besmeared with crude—their trousers
tucked into boots reaching above the knee, and most likely wearing at
the same time a nobby necktie—might be seen boarding the boats with the
agility of a cat and the courage of warriors, shouting, managing,
directing and leading in the perilous work of safe exit. Sunday creeds
were forgotten and the third commandment, constantly snapped in twain,
gave emphasis to the crashing hulks and barrels. A pillar of the
Presbyterian church, seeing his barge unmanned, ran screaming at the top
of his voice: “Where in sheol is Parker?” This so amused his good
brethren that they used it as a by-word for months.
The cry of “Pond Freshet” would bring the entire population of Oil City
to witness the arrival of the boats. Sometimes the tidal wave would
force them on a sand-bar in the Allegheny, smashing and crushing them
like egg-shells. Oil from overturned or demolished boats belonged to
whoever chose to dip it up. More than one solid citizen got his start on
fortune’s road by dipping oil in this way. If the voyage ended safely
the oil was transferred from the guipers—fifty barrels each—and small
boats to larger ones for shipment to Pittsburg. William Phillips,
joint-owner of the biggest well on Oil Creek, was the first man to take
a cargo of crude in bulk to the Smoky City. The pond-freshet was a great
institution in its day, with romantic features that would enrapture an
artist and tickle lovers of sensation to the fifth rib. One night the
lantern of a careless workman set fire to the oil in one of the boats.
Others caught and were cut loose to drift down the river, floating up
against a pier and burning the bridge at Franklin. Running the “rapids”
on the St. Lawrence river or the “Long Sault” on the Ottawa was not half
so thrilling and hair-raising as a fleet of oil-boats in a crush at the
mouth of Oil Creek.
The fleet of creek and river-boats engaged in this novel traffic
numbered two-thousand craft. The “guiper,” scow-shaped and holding
twenty-five to fifty barrels, was the smallest. The “French Creekers”
held ten to twelve-hundred barrels and were arranged to carry oil in
bulk or barrels. At first the crude was run into open boats, which a
slight motion of the water would sometimes capsize and spill the cargo
into the stream. When prices ruled low oil was shipped in bulk; when
high, shippers used barrels to lessen the danger of loss. Thousands of
empty barrels, lashed together like logs in a raft, were floated from
Olean. The rate from the more distant wells to Oil City was one-dollar a
barrel. From Oil City to Pittsburg it varied from twenty-five cents to
three dollars, according to the weather, the stage of water or the
activity of the demand. Each pond-freshet cost two or three-hundred
dollars, paid to the mill-owners for storing the water and the use of
their dams. Twice a week—Wednesday and Saturday—was the average at the
busy season. The flood of petroleum from flowing-wells in 1862 exceeded
the facilities for storing, transporting, refining and burning the oil,
which dropped to ten cents a barrel during the summer. Thousands of
barrels ran into Oil Creek. Pittsburg was the chief market for crude,
which was transferred at Oil City to the larger boats. The steamer-fleet
of tow-boats—it exceeded twenty—brought the empties back to Oil City.
The “Echo,” Captain Ezekiel Gordon; the “Allegheny Belle No. 4,” Captain
John Hanna; the “Leclaire,” Captain Kelly; the “Ida Rees,” Captain Rees,
and the “Venango” were favorite passenger-steamers. The trip from
Pittsburg—one-hundred-and-thirty-three miles—generally required thirty
to thirty-six hours. Mattresses on the cabin-floor served as beds for
thirty or forty male passengers, who did not undress and rose early that
the tables might be set for breakfast. The same tables were utilized
between meals and in the evening for poker-games. The busiest man on the
boat was the bar-tender and the clerk was the most important. He carried
letters and money for leading oil-shippers. It was not uncommon for
Alfred Russell, of the “Echo,” John Thompson, of the “Belle No. 4,” and
Ruse Russ, of the “Venango,” to walk into Hanna’s or Abrams’s
warehouse-office with large packages of money for John J. Fisher,
William Lecky, John Mawhinney, William Thompson and others who bought
oil. No receipts were given or taken and, notwithstanding the apparent
looseness in doing business, no package was ever lost or stolen. The
boats usually landed at the lower part of the eddy to put off passengers
wishing to stop at the Moran and Parker Hotels. At Hanna & Co.’s and
Abrams & Co.’s landing, where the northern approach of the suspension
bridge now is, they put off the remaining passengers, freight and empty
oil-barrels. Many a Christian-looking man was heard to swear as he left
the gang-plank of the boat and struck the mud, tough and greasy and
deep. He would soon tumble to the situation, roll up his trousers and
“pull for the shore.”
Horses and mules dragged the empty boats up Oil Creek, a terrible task
in cold weather. Slush or ice and floating oil shaved the hair off the
poor animals as if done with a razor. The treatment of the patient
creatures—thousands were literally murdered—was frightful and few
survived. For them the plea of inability availed nothing. They were
worked until they dropped dead. The finest mule, ears very long, coat
shiny, tail vehement, eye mischievous, heels vigorous and bray distinct
and melodious, quickly succumbed to the freezing water and harsh usage.
As a single trip realized more than would buy another the brutal driver
scarcely felt the financial loss. A story is told of a boatman who
started in the morning for the wells to bring down a load of oil.
Returning in the evening, he learned that he had been drafted into the
army. Before retiring to bed he had hired a substitute for one-thousand
dollars, the proceeds of his journey of eleven miles and back. William
Haldeman hauled a man over the coals for beating his exhausted horse,
told him to buy another and handed him five-hundred dollars for eight
horses to haul a boat to the gushers at Funkville.
Pond-freshets were holidays in Oil City sufficiently memorable to go
gliding down the ages with the biggest kind of chalk-mark. Young and old
flocked to see the boats slip into the Allegheny, lodge on the
gravel-bar, strike the pier of the bridge or anchor in Moran’s Eddy.
Hundreds of boatmen, drillers, pumpers and operators would be on board.
Once the river had only a foot of water at Scrubgrass Ripple and large
boats could not get to or from Pittsburg. A ship-carpenter came from New
York to Titusville and spent his last dollar in lumber for six boxes
sixteen feet square and twelve inches deep. He covered them with
inch-boards and divided them into small compartments, to prevent the oil
from running from one end to the other and swamping the vessel. This
principle was applied to oil-boats thereafter and extended to
bulk-barges and bulk-steamships. The ingenious carpenter floated his
strange arks down to the Blood farm and bargained with Henry Balliott to
fill them on credit. He performed the voyage safely, returned in due
course, paid Balliott, built more boxes and went home in four months
with a snug fortune. His ship had come in. Railroads and pipe-lines have
relegated pond-freshets, oil-boats and Allegheny steamers to the rear,
but they were interesting features of the petroleum-development in early
days and should not be utterly forgotten.
To haul oil from inland wells to shipping-points required thousands of
horses. This service originated the wagon-train of the oil-country,
which at its best consisted of six-thousand two-horse teams and wagons.
No such transport-service was ever before seen outside of an army on a
march. General M. H. Avery, a renowned cavalry-commander during the war,
organized a regular army-train at Pithole. Travelers in the oil-regions
seldom lost sight of these endless trains of wagons bearing their greasy
freight to the nearest railroad or shipping-point. Five to seven
barrels—a barrel of oil weighed three-hundred-and-sixty pounds—taxed the
strength of the stoutest teams. The mud was practically bottomless.
Horses sank to their breasts and wagons far above their axles. Oil
dripping from innumerable barrels mixed with the dirt to keep the mass a
perpetual paste, which destroyed the capillary glands and the hair of
the animals. Many horses and mules had not a hair below the eyes. A long
caravan of these hairless beasts gave a spectral aspect to the
landscape. History records none other such roads. Houses within a
quarter-mile of the roadside were plastered with mud to the eaves. Many
a horse fell into the batter and was left to smother. If a wagon broke
the load was dumped into the mud-canal, or set on the bank to be taken
by whoever thought it worth the labor of stealing. Teamsters would pull
down fences and drive through fields whenever possible, until the valley
of Oil Creek was an unfathomable quagmire. Think of the bone and sinew
expended in moving a thousand barrels of oil six or eight miles under
such conditions. Two-thirds of the work had to be done in the fall and
winter, when the elements spared no effort to increase the discomfort
and difficulty of navigation by boat or wagon. To haul oil a half-dozen
miles cost three to five dollars a barrel at certain periods of the
year. Thousands of barrels were drawn to Shaw’s Landing, near Meadville,
and thousands to Garland Station and Union City, on the Philadelphia &
Erie Railroad. The hauling of a few hundred barrels not infrequently
consumed so much time that the shipper, in the rapid fluctuations of the
market, would not realize enough to pay the wagon-freight. A buyer once
paid ten-thousand dollars for one-thousand barrels at Clapp farm, above
Oil City, and four-thousand for teaming it to Franklin, to be shipped by
the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad to New York. Even after a
plank-road had been built from Titusville to Pithole, cutting down the
teaming one-half or more, the cost of laying down a barrel of crude in
New York was excessive. In January of 1866 it figured as follows:
Government tax $1 00
Barrel 3 25
Teaming from Pithole to Titusville 1 25
Freight from Titusville to New York 3 65
Cooperage and platform expenses 1 00
Leakage 25
———
Total $10 40
======
The Oil Creek teamster, rubber-booted to the waist and flannel-shirted
to the chin, was a picturesque character. He was skilled in profanity
and the savage use of the whip. A week’s earnings—ten, twenty and thirty
dollars a day—he would spend in revelry on Saturday night. Careless of
the present and heedless of the future, he took life as it came and
wasted no time worrying over consequences. If one horse died he bought
another. He regulated his charges by the depth and consistency of the
mud and the wear and tear of morality and live-stock. Eventually he
followed the flat-boat and barge and guiper to oblivion, railroads and
pipe-lines supplanting him as a carrier of oil. Some of the best
operators in the region adopted teaming temporarily, to get a start.
They saved their money for interests in leases or drilling-wells and not
a few went to the front as successful producers. The free-and-easy,
devil-may-care teamster of yore, brimful of oil and tobacco and not
averse to whiskey, is a tradition, remembered only by men whose polls
are frosting with silver threads that do not stop at sixteen to one.
Wharves, warehouses and landings crowded Oil City from the mouth of Oil
Creek to the Moran House. Barrels filled the warehouse-yards, awaiting
their turn to be hauled or boated to the wells, filled with crude and
returned for shipment. Loaded and empty boats were coming and going
continually. Firms and individuals shipped thousands of barrels daily,
employing a regiment of men and stacks of cash. William M. Lecky, still
a respected citizen of Oil City, hustled for R. D. Cochran & Co., whose
“Tiber” was a favorite tow-boat. Parker & Thompson, Fisher Brothers,
Mawhinney Brothers and John Munhall & Co. were strong concerns. Their
agents scoured the producing farms to buy oil at the wells and arrange
for its delivery. Prices fluctuated enormously. Crude bought in
September of 1862 at thirty cents a barrel sold in December at eleven
dollars. John B. Smithman, Munhall’s buyer, walked up the creek one
morning to buy what he could at three dollars. A dispatch at Rouseville
told him to pay four, if necessary to secure what the firm desired. At
Tarr Farm another message quoted five dollars. By the time he reached
Petroleum Centre the price had reached six dollars and his last
purchases that afternoon were at seven-fifty. Business was done on honor
and every agreement was fulfilled to the letter, whether the price rose
or fell. Lecky, Thomas B. Simpson, W. J. Young and Isaac M. Sowers—he
was the second mayor of Oil City—clerked in these shipping-offices,
which proved admirable training-schools for ambitious youths. William
Porterfield and T. Preston Miller tramped over Oil Creek and Cherry Run
for the Fishers. Col. A. J. Greenfield, Bradley & Whiting and I. S.
Gibson bought at Rouseville and R. Richardson at Tarr Farm. “Pres”
Miller, “Hi” Whiting and “Ike” Gibson—square, manly and honorable—are
treading the golden-streets. John Mawhinney—big in soul and body, true
to the core and upright in every fiber—has voyaged to the haven of rest.
William Parker is president of the Oil City Savings Bank and Thompson
returned east years ago. John Munhall settled near Philadelphia and
William Haldeman removed to Cleveland. The iron-horse and the pipe-line
revolutionized the methods of handling crude and retired the shippers,
most of whom have shipped across the sea of time into the ocean of
eternity.
Fisher Brothers have a long and enviable record as shippers and
producers of oil, “staying the distance” and keeping the pole in the
hottest race. Men have come and men have retreated in the mad whirl of
speculation and wild rush for the bottom of the sand, but they have gone
on steadily for a generation and are to-day abreast of the situation.
Whether a district etched its name on the Rainbow of Fame or mocked the
dreams of the oil-seeker, they did not lose their heads or their credit.
John J. Fisher went to Oil City in 1862 and Fisher Brothers began
shipping oil by the river to Pittsburg in 1863, succeeding John Burgess
& Co. The three brothers divided their forces, to give each department
personal supervision, John J. managing the buying and shipping at Oil
City and Frederick and Henry receiving and disposing of the cargoes at
Pittsburg. Competent men bought crude at the wells and handled it in the
yards and on the boats. The firm owned a fleet of bulk-boats and
tow-boats and acres of barrels. Each barrel was branded with a huge F on
either head. The “Big F”—widely known as Oil Creek or the Drake well—was
the trademark of fair play and spot cash. When railroads were built the
Fishers discarded boats and used more barrels than before. When
wooden-tanks—a car held two—were introduced they adopted them and let
the barrels slide. When pipe-lines were laid they purchased
certificate-oil and continued to be large shippers until seaboard lines
suspended the older systems of freighting crude by water or rail, in
barrels or in tanks. From the beginning to the end of the shipping-trade
Fisher Brothers were in the van.
Next devoting their attention entirely to the production of oil and gas,
with the Grandins and Adnah Neyhart they invested heavily at Fagundas
and laid the first pipe-line at Tidioute. They operated below Franklin
and were pioneers at Petrolia. Organizing the Fisher Oil-Company, they
drilled in all the Butler pools and held large interests at McDonald and
Washington. At present they are operating in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West
Virginia, the Fisher ranking with the foremost companies in extent and
solidity. The brothers have their headquarters in the Germania Building,
Pittsburg, and juicy wells in a dozen counties. Time has dealt kindly
with all three, as well as with Daniel Fisher, ex-mayor of Oil City.
They have loads of experience and capital and too much energy to think
of adjusting their halo for retirement from active work. True men in all
the relations of life, Fisher Brothers worthily represent the splendid
industry they have had no mean part in making the greatest and grandest
of any age or nation. To natural shrewdness and the quick perception
that comes from contact with the activities of the world they joined
business-ability that would have proved successful in whatever career
they undertook to map out.
[Illustration:
FREDERICK FISHER
JOHN J. FISHER HENRY FISHER
]
The first suggestion of improvement in transportation was made in 1860,
at Parkersburg, W. Va., by General Karns to C. L. Wheeler, now of
Bradford. An old salt-well Karns had resurrected at Burning Springs
pumped oil freely and he conceived the plan of a six-inch line of pipe
to Parkersburg to run the product by gravity. The war interfered and the
project was not carried out. At a meeting at Tarr Farm, in November of
1861, Heman Janes broached the idea of laying a line of four-inch
_wooden-pipes_ to Oil City, to obviate the risk, expense and uncertainty
of transporting oil by boats or wagons. He proposed to bury the pipe in
a trench along the bank of the creek and let the oil gravitate to its
destination. A contract for the entire work was drawn with James Reed,
of Erie. Col. Clark, of Clark & Sumner, grasped the vast possibilities
the method might involve and advised applying to the Legislature for a
general pipe-line charter. Reed’s contract was not signed and a bill was
introduced in 1862 to authorize the construction of a pipe-line from Oil
Creek to Kittanning. The opposition of four-thousand teamsters engaged
in hauling oil defeated the bill and the first effort to organize a
pipe-line company.
J. L. Hutchings, a Jersey genius, came to the oil-country in the spring
of 1862 with a rotary-pump he had patented. To show its adaptation to
the oil-business he laid a string of tubing from Tarr Farm to the
Humboldt Refinery, below Plumer. He set his pump working and sent a
stream of crude over the hills to the refinery. The pipe was of poor
quality, the joints leaked and a good deal of oil fell by the wayside,
yet the experiment showed that the idea was feasible. Although eminent
engineers declared friction would be fatal, the result proved that
distance and grade were not insurmountable. Eminent engineers had
declared the locomotive would not run on smooth rails and that a cow on
the track would disrupt George Stephenson’s whole system of travel,
hence their dictum regarding pipe-lines had little weight. Dr. Dionysius
Lardner nearly burst a flue laughing at the absurdity of a vessel
without sails crossing the ocean and wrote a treatise to demonstrate its
impossibility, but the saucy Sirius steamed over the herring-pond all
the same. The rotary-pump at Tarr Farm confounded the scientists who
worshipped theory and believed friction would knock out steam and pipe
and American ingenuity and keep oil-operators forever subject to mud and
pond-freshets. The two-inch line to the Humboldt Refinery planted the
seed that was to become a great tree. Nobody saw this more plainly than
the teamsters, who proceeded to tear up the pipe and warn producers to
quit monkeying with new-fangled methods of transportation. That settled
the first pipe-line and left the rampant teamsters, modern imitators of
“Demetrius the silversmith,” the upper dog in the fight.
Hutchings—the boys called him “Hutch”—had pump and pipe-line on the
brain and would not be suppressed. He put down a line in 1863 from the
big Sherman well to the terminus of the railroad at Miller Farm. The
pipes were cast-iron, connected by lead-sockets and laid in a shallow
ditch. The jarring of the pump loosened the joints and three-fourths of
the oil started at the well failed to reach the tanks, two miles north.
The teamsters were not in business solely for their health and they tore
up the line to be sure it would not cut off any of their revenue.
Hutchings persisted in his endeavors until debts overwhelmed him and he
died penniless and disappointed. The ill-starred inventor, who lived a
trifle ahead of the times, deserves a bronze statue on a shaft of
imperishable granite.
The Legislature granted a pipe-line charter in 1864 to the Western
Transportation Company, which laid a line from the Noble & Delamater
well to Shaffer. The cast-iron pipe, five inches in diameter, was laid
on a regular grade in the mode of a water-pipe. The lead points leaked
like a fifty-cent umbrella, just as the Hutchings line had done, and the
attempt to improve transportation was abandoned.
Samuel Van Syckle, a Jerseyite of inventive bent, arrived at Titusville
in the fall of 1864. The problem of oil-transportation, rendered
especially important by the opening of the Pithole field, soon engrossed
his attention. In August of 1865 he completed a two-inch line from
Pithole to Miller Farm. Mr. Wood and Henry Ohlen, of New York, held an
interest and the First National Bank of Titusville loaned the money to
forward the project. J. N. Wheeler screwed the first joints together.
Two pump-stations, a mile west of Pithole and at Cherry Run, at first
helped force the oil through the pipe, which was buried two feet under
ground “to be out of the way of the farmer’s plow.” Eight-hundred
barrels a day could be run and the frantic teamsters talked of resorting
to violence to cripple so formidable a rival. The pipeage was one dollar
a barrel, at which rate the Pithole and Miller Farm Pipe-Line ought to
have been a bonanza. Van Syckle traded heavily in oil and commanded
plenty of capital. A. W. Smiley managed the line and bought oil for Van
Syckle, who conducted this branch of business in his son’s name.
Smiley’s largest transaction was a purchase of one-hundred-thousand
barrels, at five dollars a barrel, from the United-States Petroleum
Company, in one lot. Young Van Syckle spent money as the whim struck
him. If Smiley refused his demand for a hundred or a thousand dollars,
the fly youth would refuse to sign drafts and threaten to stop the whole
concern. There was nothing to do in such cases but imitate Colonel
Scott’s coon and “come down.” The Culver failure in May of 1866
compelled the First National Bank to press its claim against the line,
which passed into the hands of Jonathan Watson. J. T. Briggs and George
S. Stewart operated it for the bank and Watson until William H. Abbott
and Henry Harley purchased the entire equipment.
Reverses beset Van Syckle, who induced George S. and Milton Stewart to
erect a big refinery at Titusville to test his pet theory of “continuous
distillation.” Failure, tedious litigation and heavy loss resulted. Van
Syckle’s mind teemed with new schemes and new devices for refining. He
possessed the rare faculty of finding friends willing to listen to his
plans and back him with cash. Some of his ideas were valuable and they
are in use to-day. Mismanagement swamped the enterprises he created and
Van Syckle finally removed to Buffalo, where his checkered life closed
peacefully on March second, 1894. While often unsuccessful financially,
earnest men like Samuel Van Syckle benefit mankind. The oil-business is
much better for the fertile brain and perseverance of the man whose
pipe-line was the first to deliver oil to a railroad. His example
stimulated other men combining keen perception and executive ability,
who could sift the wheat from the chaff and discard the useless and
impracticable.